Juveniles Should Be Tried As Adults Research Paper

Trying as Juvenile or adult

Children under 18 years old, should be tried as adults or juvenile? Kids tried as juvenile will have a life, kids who are tried, as adults will spend most of their lives in jail. Judging on children as adults or not will stand on how big the crime is and on how smart the child is. Some children are children mature, they are young in age but their brains are very active and i mature. Children become violent and aggressive because the media, on the television there are always fighting, killing and stealing. Unconsciously the child will copy what he or she is watching on the television. Most of the children nowadays watch television without parents being around, because the parents are busy working, cooking or chatting on Facebook with their friends. Thus, the child will have no idea of what is right and what is wrong, and so they will turn into
young criminals. Two months ago in Egypt, a young girl at age of 6 was rapped and killed by a security guy and child at age of 10. The judger judged the child as a juvenile because he was less than 18 years old. Normally in such a case the murderer should be killed. About 60% of the people, who were in the court asked for the child to be killed for doing such a crime, but the judger couldn’t break the law. Any child who commits a crime should be punished harshly. Malcolm C Young and Genni said, “As more guns came onto the streets, more juveniles began to carry them for self-defense […]”(2000,p.3) kids shouldn’t be carrying guns to defend themselves. Kids who carry guns are mature kids; if they killed someone with it they should be judged as adults. For carrying a gun and shooting someone with it. On the other hand, the environment around children affects them. If a child lives in a house full of fights, automatically the child will become violent and will go fight with people outside and might kill someone, because the children copies what they at home. Moreover, violence media that expose cartoons full of hitting, stealing and killing, children watch television a lot and their brains record what they watch on television. if any child committed a crime and tried as an adult, it will increase the child bad behavior. Fore example, a child in jail with adult criminals for many years, the child will grow with those adult criminals having the same bad behavior and altitude. The child will be more criminal than before. In addition, those you kinds deserve to live their normal childhood. If those young kids were tried as adults they would have no life and will spend all of their lives in jail, which is not fair to put a child under 18 years old in jail for stealing. There should other solutions to punish those children. It was said by John and Catherine “Their development is incomplete, their judgment is less than mature, and their character is still developing […]”(2000, p.3) Children under 18 years old, don’t drive, are not allowed to drink, they do not vote and they don’t work. That proves that a child is not responsible yet for his or her actions. Juveniles commit the crime and they do not mean to commit the crime, they just do the crime based on what is saved in their brains, on what they saw on real life and had no one to advise them. In some cases the judge looks at the young kid age and sees what made the child to commit the crime. Hence, the judge tries the child as juveniles. However, some other judges tries the child as an adult because of the terrible crime they did, judges think that if the child was judged as a juvenile and went back home, the young kid will do the same mistake again. From those judges prospective, if children did a mistake, they deserve to be punished very harsh to learn not to do the same mistake again. Incidentally, juveniles are not the same as criminal adults.
Juveniles are young kids who are not responsible for their actions and they copy what they see. Beside, their parents are mistaken for not watching their kids and advising them. If their parents advised their kids, they would of never committed any crime. Juveniles are those kids who are under age of 18; according to society they are judged to be not responsible and old enough. Criminal adults are people who are 18 years old and above. They are responsible for their actions and they plan before they commit the crime; they also know that its wrong and they will be tried for it. The juveniles neither do plan for committing a crime nor knowing that they will be tried for committing a crime. In criminal adults court the judge doesn’t look at the age of the criminal, he looks straight through the evidence. It would be a bit unfair to do that for a child who is under 18 years old, to be judged through evidence without looking at the age. Since the child is not mature enough, the judge should be lenient and give young kids a second
chance. Debates will never end about trying children as adults or as juveniles. It will defer from people prospective, country law and how big the crime is. Children are young creatures, which are born to learn and do mistakes to learn from them. If they were compared to adults and be tried as adults it will definitely be unfair. Kids are not angels, they will do mistakes that will make parents be very shocked, but trying them, as adults will end their lives and future.

Reference
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur (2000). Should Juvenile Offenders Be Tried As Adults? (19122) Retrieved from http://www.willamette.edu/cla/debate/pdf/youth_forum/kpdc%20research/motion%202%20affirm/bongo_DATA%20ON%20JUVENILES.pdf

Malcolm C. Young and Jenni Gainsborough (2000). Prosecuting Juveniles in Adult Court. Retrieved from http://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/sp/juvenile.pdf

Should Children be Tried as Adults?
Nariman Mohamed
American University of Sharjah