Juvenile Court Vs Adult Court Essay

Juvenile courts and adult courts are both similar and different in many ways. They’re mainly similar in putting away offenders or giving a punishment. Juvenile courts and adult courts are different in the way that juveniles are not put on trial for committing crimes, but for delinquent actions, and when the delinquent actions are very severe, then they could be considered crimes and the juvenile could be tried as an adult in the adult court system. Also juveniles don’t have the same right to a public trial in front of a jury that adults do. Juvenile courts seem to be more lenient towards their offenders because in their case they are trying to rehabilitate and reform delinquents and then release them into public society. Whereas the purpose of adult court is simply to punish
Delinquents are known as persons under the legal age, who commit crimes. Most people see delinquents as a teenager who was caught consuming alcohol under age, or partaking in the use of illegal drugs, but in reality delinquents are capable of committing crimes much heavier than those. There are a great number of acts of delinquency that go beyond small crimes; there are juveniles who have even committed murder, some more than once. The slightly smaller crimes, such as underage drinking, are called status offenses. These are actions that are used only to a certain class of people, and most often applied to offenses only committed by minors. When a juvenile commits a status offense they are not necessarily committing a heavy crime. Status offenses can be used to describe a juvenile who got a traffic violation, or was fined for some reason, but never arrested. There are speculations, however, that the punishments for these status offences should be harsher because some people believe that these offenses can lead a delinquent to commit harsher crimes if