Why We Should Not Try Juveniles As Adults

¨Children who commit serious crimes still have the ability to change their lives for the better. It is now time for state and federal officials to take positive steps by enacting policies that seek to redeem children, instead of throwing them in prison for the rest of their lives.” This is a quote from David Berger, who is a Deputy District Attorney for the County of Los Angeles, California. He believes that juveniles should not be charged as adults, even if the crime they committed is considered a ´tragedy´ and is thought to be ´horrid´. But we should not try juveniles as adults for many reasons. Three of these reasons are that legally, they are not of adult age, their brains have not developed, and()
First of all, articles from jjei.com say that it is not fair that society does not
allow children to smoke, purchase alcohol, vote, or enlist into the army, but are allowed to be tried as adults when the circumstances suddenly change?
Adolescents are not allowed to do these things because they are recognized for their inability to make ´adult´ decisions. No one says, ´this election is important, so letś allow the kids to vote´, so it should not be seen as acceptable to allow the criminal justice system to try adolescents as adults. Supportsecondchance.com says that contrary to popular belief, it is the child who has to decide what to tell the defense attorney, not his or her parents or guardian. The child must have to decide what to tell the judge, whether or not they wish to testify, and whether to accept or deny a plea bargain, among other things. Juveniles often do not understand how court trials work, and often end up giving evidence against themselves that allows for the judge to sentence them for a longer time. The courts should ensure that the child who is to be tried is competent and is able to understand what happens in a court hearing. It ensures fairness and this way not as many children are sentenced to be in jail. Statistics also find that there have been a variety of problems with the fact that there are blended
sentencing laws. These consequences include that instead of giving the judge the right to choose whether a child will be tried as an adult, they will assign the position to the prosecutor. The prosecutors are often biased toward the child, whereas the judge would be forced to look at the crime on it's own. Because of this, policy analysts have been looking into whether states have gone too far in their legislation. Teenink.com says that those in favor of trying juveniles as adults say that it would give the victim of the crime closure, but in reality, children are often tried for petty reasons, such as a small theft. Children should be given the chance to rebuild their character and learn from their mistakes. It was also found in a study that juveniles are naturally more immature than adults, and the Supreme Court agrees. In the ´Roper versus Simmons´ case, Justice Kennedy wrote that ´"any parent knows" and "scientific and sociological studies ... tend to confirm "that children possess a "lack of maturity" .. an underdeveloped sense of responsibility .. and take impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions." The ´Roper versus Simmons´ case was a trial very similar to these back in 1993. Two seventeen year old boys murdered one of their classmates, and the evidence was overwhelming at the trial that it was them who committed the crime. After Simmons confessed to the crime, he was sentenced to death. The public was divided on what should happen to the boys, as Simmons and others said that he should get a chance to re-evaluate his actions at the juvenile prison and that he should not have been tried as an adult, since we was seventeen. Roper and many others argued that statement. Nonetheless, this was the movement that led to the new ruling of no capital punishment for those under the age of eighteen. Before the Pro-Roper movement, only twelve states had a ruling of no-execution of juveniles, and a whopping nineteen states had their minimum age limit set at sixteen. That means that in nineteen states, sixteen years olds could be sentenced to death. The Supreme Court's decision in the case had resolved the death sentences of seventy-two others for crimes they committed while younger than age eighteen. Prior to the ruling, seventeen children had been executed since 1976 up to that point in 2004. Simmons was able to get off the death row and helped to save many others who could have rehabilitated themselves in juvenile prison, but sadly were never given the chance. In addition to this information, it was found that the United States is currently the only country in the world that sentences juveniles to life in prison. Some kids as young as thirteen are sent to die in adult prisons, according to eji.org. Doing so was argued to be ´unconstitutional´, and so new laws were in place that still allows judges to give life sentences, but only to those who are involved in homicide cases. Children who are sent to adult prisons do not have the chance for rehabilitation, which is something that juvenile prisons offer.