Juvenile Justice | Teen Ink

Juvenile Justice

January 13, 2010
By leslie.lam123 SILVER, Houston, Texas
leslie.lam123 SILVER, Houston, Texas
5 articles 0 photos 0 comments

Kids all over the world will surprise one when they commit crimes, especially when they will be tried as adults for the crime that they committed. Juveniles should be tried as adults, so they will understand how they will be dealt with for committing such an awful crime. They wouldn’t be in the Juvenile Department if they had followed the rules in the first place. Children commit crimes, which happen every day, and because of this they should be put in rehabilitation. Should children be tried in court as adults or as a child?
Crimes that are committed by delinquents should be charged the same as adults when doing a crime. Children who commit crimes like rape, murder, and assault are usually not tried in court because of their age. However, the confidentiality of the children is kept private during their hearing and is never said as guilty, just named as a delinquent. Children don’t understand things like adults do; “People of any age either have morals or they don’t, it’s just a known fact” (Wilde 1). It’s not reasonable that someone who murdered someone “just for fun” gets to live a new life with no cost, “Children shouldn’t only be taken to juvenile detention and live new lives later for something as bad as murder” (Wilde 1). Children need to be put in a successful treatment of rehabilitation.
Others argue that children should be tried as children because they should get a shot at changing in rehabilitation. Juveniles should all be treated the same, even if they committed a crime such as theft. The delinquents should still be put in jail because who knows if they will continue the crime again or not. If kids want to “be adults” by murdering someone or doing drugs, then they should be treated like an adult and be put in jail with everyone else. Not understanding that crime can hurt others is a big problem, “Minors don’t understand the consequences for the crime they have committed” (Hendricks 1). One example, “Two 10-year olds took a 2-year old and mutilated and murdered him, and did not even think that it was wrong” (Hendricks 1). If crimes are extremely violent and involve murder, then crimes committed by delinquents should be treated the same way as adults, no if’s or buts’ about it. But I can possibly agree that crimes, such as theft and drugs, should be tried just as children in the Juvenile Detention Center.

If children just went to the Juvenile Detention Center, then they would not know the meaning of a real punishment. A child needs a punishment to teach them a valuable lesson; it’s not to keep doing that bad thing over and over again. The child may not like the punishment that they are given, but in the end they know that it’s the right thing, and it will hopefully start to show in them.

The author's comments:
This paper is very interesting, but it just looks like a boring topic.

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on May. 30 2016 at 1:12 pm
ambivalent SILVER, West Bend, Wisconsin
7 articles 0 photos 180 comments

Favorite Quote:
everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. the worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. [sylvia plath]

Try to avoid naked sentences (sentences where you use none of your own words, where the whole sentence is a quote, yknow?) It just makes it flow a little bit better. Thank you so much for writing about this, as it is such a controversial topic.