Essay On Juveniles

There are certain laws made specifically to protect people and their rights, but when it comes to juveniles there are no laws to protect them in the juvenile justice system whatsoever. Youth are not able to purchase tobacco until they are 21, they cannot have sexual intercourse until 16, and cannot drink alcohol until 21. Why is it that adolescents have to wait until all these ages to do certain things and aren’t officially considered adults until the age of 18, but there are juveniles as young as four years old being tried as adults? It is only fair that adolescents have special laws just made for them in order to defend their rights as juveniles. Proposition 21 had been created and approved in the year 2000 due to a surplus of gangs and
The majority of the juveniles who commit crimes have no idea exactly what they’re doing, whether they felt pressured to do something or they just simply do not know the circumstances and consequences the crime can have. So if the juveniles cannot understand the circumstances during the crime, then they definitely cannot defend themselves in court either. As said in Greg Krikorian’s text, “It is a violation of constitutional rights to be a defendant in a criminal proceeding when you are not competent to defend yourself’’ (para 4). It is very unjust for the justice system to expect juveniles to defend themselves in court, where they are being treated like grown adults. As a result of not thoroughly understanding the conditions they are in, juveniles tend to feel forced to plead guilty just in order to get out of the situation they are in or to get a deal and end up throwing in the towel to be wrongfully convicted of a crime they did not commit. Juveniles do not belong in adult prison also because more than half of the juveniles sent to adult prison are charged with felonious crimes. In actuality, these juveniles do not need nor should be facilitated with adults because they are very young and might even have been under pressure to follow through with the crime committed. Additionally, a
Two people who commit the same exact crime, can receive two totally different sentences or even go to jail for a crime they did not even commit. The court system should be equitable towards all the people who walk into that courtroom, meaning it is unjust for an adolescent charged with a petty crime to be sent to a prison where there are adults who have committed serious crimes being; murder, rape, kidnapping, etc. When this situation does actually happen and the juvenile is being sent to adult prison, the prosecutor is opening a door to cause that young child to experience trauma, both physically and mentally. One example of a victim who unfortunately suffered being tried as an adult is a young man named Kalief Browder. Browder was 16 years of age when the police arrested and accused him of theft of a backpack (Time). In the film Time: The Kalief Browder Story, Kalief explains himself that he in fact did not steal a backpack and that he spent a whole three years in adult prison waiting for a trial, which kept on being postponed (Time). The process in which the justice system handled Kalief was very unjust, because in Kalief’s mind and based on what the officers had told him, he would be going home the next day, but shockingly, he arrived at Rikers Island where he would spend the majority of his three years in prison in solitary confinement. Browder did not know why they brought him to