...Juvenile Justice; Don’t Send The Future Away The day I got locked up was a bad day. When I got out i thought it was over not knowing it’s a whole court system I had to go through. I was 16 at the time so I got tried as an adult. I sign my plea for two weeks of probation later. Is the question “are juveniles getting a fair justice?” According to Nicole Scialabba during a single year, an estimated 2.1 million youth under the age of 18 are arrested in the United States. Since the 1980s there has been growing concern about crimes committed by young people. Juveniles should not be tried as adults because young offenders are at risk sent to adult prisons, they are more likely to commit crimes and they lack understanding of the crime they committed. Juveniles should not be tried as adults because they will be sent to an adult prison. An adult prison will have an extremely destructive effect on the juveniles. “Young prisoners are also at a disadvantage because they are not as mature (mentally and physically) as older prisoners (Scott). It is saying that automatically going in a adult prison they are already not safe. Compared to adults they are small. The adult prisoners are physically bigger than juveniles so...
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...Suppose that today around midnight you're in bed and you're asleep. Around 12:37 am you get a call from the local police station. You answer and the officer gives you the news that your son who is your only child has been killed by his best friend who is the same age. At court the offender only receives seven years and the possibility of parole. This sentence would not equal to a life that he took away. I believe that juveniles who commit crime should be charged as adults, they have committed a first or second degree murder and it is the victims families right to believe the convict deserves to pay the sentence. One reason why juveniles should be tried as adults is because the crime they have committed is a serious crime. “Fourteen-year-old Brazil, charged in last May’s shooting of middle-school teacher Grunow, was found guilty of second-degree murder” (Thompson 1). Brazil was a juvenile who committed a murder. This murder was intentional and he had the desire to kill his teacher. “but prosecutors argued that by...
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...Every year there are millions of people committing crimes, but the crimes committed by juveniles gets the most attention from the public. During the recent years, more and more teens get sentenced as an adult. They sent teens from the juveniles’ courts to the adult courts. Their crimes are viewed more harshly and critically, which explain the reason why they are being tried as an adult. Many people gave different kind of opinion on this kind of topic, whether or not teens get tried as adults. There are many articles that address this topic and their claim on this controversial topic. Some of the articles that review this matter are “Juveniles Don’t Deserve Life Sentence” by Gail Garinger, “On Punishments and Teen Killers” by Jennifer Jenkins, and “Kids are Kids- Until They Commit Crimes” by Marie Lundstorm. They both have their own opinions and knowledge on this topic. My position in this issue is juveniles don’t deserve to be tried as adults. There has been a relentless amount of fear in the public about juveniles making...
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...January 2015 Abstract Do you believe that juveniles should ever be tried as adults? If so, in what situations and why? That question that was put forth to fifteen different people in a survey. Along with the survey, several articles related to the question were researched This survey and the research on the articles was done in order to gather enough information to present both sides of this issue. The results show that almost all of the fifteen people had very similar responses. The articles that were relative to this question offered very good arguments for both sides. Fourteen of the fifteen people surveyed immediately responded by saying that it all depended on the seriousness of the crime committed. For the more serious crimes such as murder, rape, and any other crime that results in the victim being harmed, it was almost unanimous that yes, the juvenile should be tried as an adult. The results of the survey showed that fourteen out of the fifteen people felt that an individual capable of committing such crimes should be tried as adults. Should Juveniles Ever Be Tried as Adults? There has been much research and discussion regarding this question. There are many people who feel as if juveniles should be tried as adults, and likewise, there are many people who feel that juveniles should be tried only in juvenile courts. It is a question that requires much research in order for somebody to reach an intelligent decision. This essay will present information that has been gathered...
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...Should Juveniles Be Tried As Adults Hope Penson Effective Essay Writing/ Com 150 March 28, 2010 Instructor: Brandy W. Kreisler Should Juveniles be tried as Adults? The United States is the world leader in convicting children as adults. Unfortunately once a child is charged as an adult the likelihood of a fair trial is very small. Over the past 30 years there have been changes in many states laws which have led to a dramatic increase in the number of juveniles tried as adults and housed in adult jails and prisons. These get tough laws have made it easier for more and younger juvenile offenders to be prosecuted in criminal court. The purpose of juvenile court is to treat, not deter. Changing the social environment in which juveniles live is a more effective way to reduce juvenile violence than punishing the juvenile offenders in adult courts. The premise of the juvenile court is sound since children have not filly matured, they shouldn’t be held to the same standards of accountability as adults. In some states certain juvenile offenders are automatically tried as adults. Even though juveniles are committing serious crimes at an alarming rate they are not being reformed because juveniles being charged as adults do not comprehend the nature of their crimes. What is America to do? Is charging them as adults reforming them or contributing to the problem once they return to society. The Illinois Juvenile Court...
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...Lattesha Kirkland Professor Crawford ENG 101 12 June 2014 Essay 2 Youth are Charge as an Adult In the United States there are a lot of crimes being committed by youth, most of these crimes are serious enough for these children to be charged as an adult. These children are being over charged. They are still children just committing adult crimes. When these youth are tried as adults it exposes these juveniles to state prisons without parole and even execution. In addition, it is over 2,500 child offenders serving life without parole in United State prisons for crimes committed before they 18th birthday. Therefore, youth should not be tried as adults because they are being over charged for these crimes. One reason that youth should not be charged as adults is that it’s just a double standard on these children. These juveniles don’t have full brain development to even know the outcome of the crimes committed. The thing about youthful offenders is that no one seems to care about them. Most people don't like the youth of America, even the good ones can be unpleasant. Combine the feeling they have toward the average teenager with the fear inspired by youth violence, and you have a population that no one wants to deal with. There is a disturbing trend of increasing violence among young people. "Uniformly in our communities, more young people are engaging...
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...Juvenile Crime Ephrem Larry CJS/200 01/12/14 William Patton In this essay I am going to address the differences between juvenile court and adult court. I am also going to talk about the definitions of delinquency and status offenses. I will briefly describe the variables that correlate to the juvenile crime rate and make recommendations for reducing juvenile crime. There are several differences between juvenile court and adult court. “According to the Department of Juvenile Services (2014) History of Juvenile Justice in the United States,” from a historical perspective the juvenile court systems is relatively new. It was stated that in the late 1960‘s that youth did not have constitutional rights. In 1967 the U. S. Supreme Courts ruled that even though juvenile courts were civil proceeding, individuals subjected to these proceedings still faced potential loss of liberty. The Supreme Court ruled that all youth offenders in juvenile court proceedings that faced possible confinement have the following constitutional rights: The right to receive notice of charges, The right to obtain legal counsel, The right to confrontation and cross – examination, The privileges against self – incrimination, The right to receive a transcript of the proceedings, and The right to have an appellate court review the lower court’s decision (The Department of Juvenile Services , 2014). However, many of these juvenile courts...
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...Should Minors Who Commit Violent Crimes Be Tried As Adults? Thesis Statement Many adults come up with many reasons why youth involve themselves with acts of violence, there is never an actual answer to why they committed the crime, but the question of why they are being tried as an adult. Vicious misconduct is well-defined by the Division of Juvenile Justice as “murder, rape, severe attacks, and theft. These are all actions that sound terrible and cause for harsh consequences. Unluckily, there is an increasing development of adolescent violence; even “kids” under the age of sixteen are engaging in these vicious acts. When a child comes of age, they advance to being able to enjoy but not abuse adult liberties. Adolescents attain a numerous freedoms like the right to vote, buy a home, and buy tobacco goods and alcohol, however most importantly they become responsible for their behavior. Many aren’t aware of the temptations that come about once the age of maturity is reached. The mature criminal justice system is not meant to meet the desires of adolescent offenders. Solution (s) to Problems There are three problems when it comes to trying a child as an adult; it is impossible for a juvenile to stay alive in such harsh environments such as adult prison because of the age bracket and the absence of adulthood which can sometimes be taken advantage of by other offenders. Juveniles who are positioned in adult prisons are more likely to be repeat offenders because they become accustomed...
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...Juvenile Delinquent Henrietta Watson AIU Online Abstract This paper is a definition essay that explains the term juvenile delinquent. Juvenile delinquent is a person under the legal age that breaks the law. This essay will give the reader a lot of information about the term juvenile delinquent. Juvenile Delinquent Juvenile delinquents are minors usually defined as being between the ages of 10 and 18 years old who have committed some act that violates the law. Crimes committed by minors are called delinquent acts. The juvenile has an adjudication after which he or she will have a disposition and a sentence. Juvenile proceedings differ from adult proceedings in a number of ways. Delinquents will fall into two categories. The first type of delinquent act is one that would be considered a crime that a adult would commit. Some jurisdictions will even try children as adults for serious crimes. When children are tried as juveniles, parents are required to pay the court cost for their child. The second type of delinquent act is one that wouldn’t be a crime that an adult would perform. These types are known as age- related or status crimes. The most common examples of age-related crimes are staying out past your curfew and truancy. There are different approaches that are used to define and explain juvenile delinquency which are the legal approach, social work approach, psychological approach, and sociological approach. The legal approach is based on standards...
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...Juvenile Justice Essay Juvenile should be try as an adult or not is an issue that had been discussed for a long time. There are arguments and reasons that they should be try or they should not. In the passage that was provided, there are both sides of the issue that the majority think that juvenile should not be in adult prison system but the minority think that they should be. In my opinion, I agree with the majority in the Supreme Court and believe that the juvenile should not be put in adult system even though they have committed a serious crime based on variety of reasons like their age and also about the situation that led them committed crime. From the arguments in the passage, the issue is that whether the juvenile should be put in adult prison or not. The Supreme Court had ruled that juveniles who committed a murder could not be sentenced to life prison because it’s violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. I agree with this idea because juvenile even though can commit a serious...
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...Running head: Juvenile Crime 1 Juvenile Crime Patrice Lewis January 26, 2014 CJ200 Professor Lee Rankin Juvenile Crime 2 “We fight for our children, that they may enjoy the promise of America. We fight for their innocence and their dreams. It is a fight for our future.”(Schmalleger, 2011, Chapter 15). I read this quote during my reading and it stuck with me throughout this entire section. Most youth in America today struggles with the idea of dreaming a better life. Many juveniles are put in a downward position and expected to pull up with just the strength of them. Some can accomplish this but many fail and enter into the juvenile system, trying to obtain the better life. Growing up for me in a poverty stricken area I seen a lot of crime committed by juveniles. Instead of being in school and enjoying the freedom we had between classes, and taking advantage of being a kid, children were robing other kids for shoes, cell phones, and money. Children were hanging out on street corners selling drug and joining gangs, trying to obtain a sense of belonging and fast money. In my neighborhood the drug dealers and gangbangers were idealized while the police and teachers were hated. Growing up around this only made me want to push...
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...Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. This is a landmark case because “The significance of Furman v. Georgia is that this case was the first case that was ruled violating the Eighth amendment and that it halted every man on death row in the United States” (study). But before the case reached the Supreme Court the case went on trial September 20, 1968 where Furman pleaded mentally ill and insane, the court rejected his plea and found him guilty of murder. Then, Furman appealed his conviction and sentence, based on the death penalty in Georgia violating the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution . The Eighth Amendment says the federal government may not use "cruel and unusual punishments” (Henson). The case was later tried in the Supreme Court January 17, 1972. The justices who won majority and reversed the case were William J. Brennan, Jr., William O. Douglas, Thurgood Marshall, Potter Stewart, Byron R. White, thus wining the final vote 5-4. The minority justices were Harry A. Blackmun, Warren E. Burger, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., William H. Rehnquist. The majority opinion was not written by one person, each justice wrote their own opinion to the court because none could agree on any one reason. Justice William O. Douglas wrote an opinion that best explained the court’s decision,...
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...The basic definition of the word criminal is someone who commits offending behaviour within society (Harrower, 2001). The crime may range from petty theft to murder. Criminals are born not made is the discussion of this essay, it will explore the theories that attempt to explain criminal behaviour. Psychologists have come up with various theories and reasons as to why individuals commit crimes. These theories represent part of the classic psychological debate, nature versus nurture. Are individuals predisposed to becoming a criminal or are they made through their environment. There are various theories within the biological explanation as to why individuals commit criminal behaviour, these include: genetic theory, hereditary theory, psychosis and brain injury theory. In the next few paragraphs examples of each will be shown. The first theory to be explored is the hereditary theory, which stems from Cesare Lombroso (1876) father of criminology, (Feldman, 1993) whose studies were carried out by morphology. Lombroso tried to show a relationship between criminal behaviour and physical characteristics. Lombrosco suggested that an individual was predisposed to becoming a criminal, as a result of internal or innate characteristics, rather than environmental factors. Lombroso observed both criminals and non- criminals by their physical abnormalities, such as physical measurements and examinations. He concluded that most prisoners show the same physical abnormalities, which...
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...Essay on young people and statistics… The peak age for offending is between 15 and 20, with the proportion of this age group found guilty of or cautioned for indictable offences (more serious offences tried by a judge in a crown court, or a juvenile court) around 5 times as high as the average for all ages. Around a fifth of all those cautioned or convicted in any year for indictable offences are aged 10-17, and one third are under 21. Cooper and Roe (2012) estimate 10-17 year olds account for all recorded crime, with nearly 85% of this committed by males. A 2002 self-report survey found that almost half of Britain’s secondary school students admitted to breaking the law. Roe and Ashe (2008), based on findings from the 2006 offending, crime and justice survey, found 22% of 10 to 25 year olds admitted to committing at least one of twenty core offences in the previous 12 months with theft and assault making up the main offences. The reason most often given for law-breaking by young people are to impress others, and boredom. The edinborogh Study of Youth Transitions and Crimeis a continuous longitudinal study of events in the lives of 4300 young people who were aged 11-12 in autumn 1998. This found that about half the offences commited by 11-15 year olds involved rowdiness and fighting in the street with the rest consistently mainly of shop lifting (usually sweets) and vandalism (usually graffiti). While many young people will break the law at some stage, the kinds of offences...
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...Lord of the flies- Essay num1 – Tal Arnon In the book Lord of the Flies by William Golding we witness a great number of offenses. Acting as the prosecution I would accuse Jack for some of his offenses. Statement of claim against Jack Merridew for his acts during the time at the island. First of all I would like to take preventive steps against two issues that might rise: lack of jurisdiction at the island and the fact that Jack is juvenile and is considered minor by law. I believe that looking away from these merciless offenses would be unjust, unfair to the victims and a danger to society. There are some examples of ruling in the past that Natural justice ("duty to act fairly") overcome the state laws such as "The Eichmann trial"- A jurisdiction matter and "The Weizman trial"- Sentencing a minor as an adult. This case should be an exception as well. The claims: * The attempted murder of Ralph- "Trying to unlawfully cause the death of a person" Attempted murder is an offense similar to first degree murder with the exception that an attempt is lacking the outcome of the offense (The death). As we can see in the book Jack mens rea (guiltily mind) was of intent ("intention- if one decided to kill, and killed or try to kill in cold blood, without provocation occurs immediately before the kill") to kill Ralph (Jack: "see? See? That’s what you'll get! I meant that! There isn’t a tribe for you any more…" page 181; The twins: "they're going to hunt you tomorrow" page 188)...
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