'Juvenile Justice: Should Minors be charged as Adults? Essay\r'

'A movement has taken hold of our nation to mixed bag the novel justice musical arrangement, and erase whatever bank none between adolescent offenders and grownup criminals. Almost altogether(prenominal) fifty realms have changed their late justice laws, allowing more(prenominal) than than y kayoedhs to be as place as adults and scrapping long-time efforts to help restore delinquent kids and prevent future shames. It seems to be b ar and simple, a small-scale in this land is defined as a person under the shape up of eighteen. How indeed can we single bulge plastered minors and call them adults? Were they considered adults before they carried out an figure of forcefulness? No. How then, did a raging propel cause them to cross over a discover that is defined by age? The current study over fresh person hatred is being reign by two voices: elected officials proposing supple-fix solutions, and a media more intent on reporting violent offensives than successful prevention efforts. Minors should non be seek as adults in our society today. This is obvious by tights of aspect at propositions by our government such as Proposition 21, statistics on teenage curse and likewise from specific cases where minors where displaceenced in adult courts.\r\nPoliticians feel that best and easiest solution is to app arntly hook up youth offenders for long periods of time, and ignore rehabilitation. most(prenominal) studies demonst place that putting young offenders in adult prisons leads to more crime, higher prison apostrophizes, and increased violence (Cooper, 1997). Yet, we argon felling more and more on corrections, and less on prevention efforts. Some solid grounds spend more on corrections than they do on higher education. The cost of keeping teens in prison as comp ard to putting them into rehabilitation schedules is astronomically higher. The amount cost of incarcerating a new-made for one class is between $35,000 to $64,000.\r\nHowever, the average cost of an intervention program is $4,300 per child a social class (Crary, 2000). Also the dominance of prisons to prevent juveniles from becoming repeat offenders is low. Kids, who have already spent time in adult prisons, ar outlying(prenominal) more likely to pull in more stern crimes when they are released. Crime prevention programs puddle and are cost-effective. They have been shown to reduce crime intimately when compared to imprisonment after crimes have been committed. There are many crime prevention programs around the coun savor that have been very successful in support to reduce juvenile crime.\r\nMany states use earlyish intervention programs that are designed to help parents of luxuriant kids in raising their children. These programs offer strategies and tactics for dowery supervise and discipline troubled children. This is go ine because it is be guileved that one of the causes of delinquency is that parents of kids wit h delinquent tendencies simply don’t k straight what to do with them. These programs as well as other similar ones have been shown to have sooner an influence on crime prevention.\r\nMedia reports on juvenile crime are greatly exaggerated. While around headlines suggested that a â€Å"ticking time bomb” of alleged(prenominal) â€Å"super predator children” is waiting to explode, the studies show that this is simply not true. Crime level indicators show that the manlike â€Å"at venture” population will wage increase over the next decade, but the levels are far from the explosive level that the media would like to suggest. In fact, the levels are lower than those reached in the late 1970’s, when the â€Å"at risk” population last peaked (Crary, 2000). The public similarly holds greatly distorted views about the prevalence and hardness of juvenile crime. Contrary to public perception, the shareage of violent crimes committed by juvenile s is low.\r\nYoung plenty commit single 13% of violent crimes (Reeves, 2001). Also, most juvenile arrests have nothing to do with violence. Most kids only go through the juvenile justice system once. Most youths will simply out amaze delinquent behavior once they mature. The true â€Å"juvenile predator” is actually a rare breed. scarce the media thrives on sensationalism, so they gear up it appear that crime is everywhere in order to sell more newspapers, or have people watch their broadcast.\r\n tarradiddle is k directlyn to repeat itself. This saying is no lie when you look at the topic of juvenile justice. Until lettuce established the firstly juvenile court in the U.S. in 1899, children 14 and sure-enough(a) were considered to be as responsible as adults for their actions. Minors as young as 13 were occasionally sentenced to death, and some were penalize (Palmer, 1999). Discomfort with the death penalty and with imprisoning children with adults led to the launc hing of a separate court acting as the parent or guardian of young offenders. Solutions include therapy, education, and community service, as well as internment and restitution of victims.\r\nâ€Å"The (juvenile) court was established as an strain to say kids are not just subatomic adults, but people of tender course of studys with a future ahead of them,” lead tongue to Judge Martha Grace, read/write head justice of the Massachusetts insubstantial Court. â€Å"I am disturbed by the tendency now to throw away kids up and throw away the key” (Palmer, 1999). So if we already felt that children should not be equal to(p) to be tried as adults and we created a juvenile system to correct this why turn our backs on it and go back to our cruel ways of more than 100 years ago? The answer is simple, we shouldn’t. We requisite to better our juvenile system, a system that has been working(a) fine since 1899.\r\nThe government has taken the initiative to jazz u p with a plan of their own called Proposition21, which would try offenders as adults sooner than juvenile. Proposition 21 would solicit juvenile offenders 14 years or older to be charged as adults. It would eliminate unceremonial probation, and further limit confidentiality for juveniles who are charged with or convicted of specified felonies. Proposition 21 would require that trustworthy juvenile crime offenders be held in a local or state correctional facilities rather than in juvenile facilities. It would designate certain crimes as violent and serious, thereby making offenders subject to long- animateness sentences. Proposition 21 was proposed so that 14 year olds and older would be tried as adults for serious crimes. If proposition 21 passes it is going to send thousands of fourteen to sixteen year olds to state prison. Right now the cost of vandalism, in order to be considered a felony, is fifty thousand dollars, and if proposition 21 passes the cost is going to be reduce d to four degree Celsius dollars.\r\nProposition 21 does nothing to protect our communities, and all it does is jug children. Rather than decrease, if proposition 21 passes, crime pass judgment are going to increase. If passed, it will incarcerate many juveniles with top-notch criminals. These children will not be apt(p) the opportunity for rehabilitation like in the juvenile system. Without treatment and education, the only thing a juvenile can learn while incarcerated with adult criminals, is how to kick the bucket a better criminal. These teenagers will not be given the opportunity of rehabilitation and will total out of jail only tougher. Our nation also has a tragic record of sexual and physiologic assaults on juveniles incarcerated with adult criminals.\r\nAdult criminals will then take advantage of these teenagers. A Chicago sunlight Times writer states that â€Å"Prop. 21 would shift the world power to decide which juveniles get tried as adults from decide to prose cutors. In Florida, where a similar law was passed, prosecutors sent almost as many young offenders to the state’s adult courts as judges did in the whole of the rest of the country †and 71 percent of them were for nonviolent crimes”( Huffington, 2000). Proposition 21 is a direful idea and is a step in the incorrect direction that only further hurts our youth.\r\nMany people feel that juvenile crime is getting out of control. If you look at the statistics, you can see that this is not true. early days advocates say the â€Å"public does not tell apart that the vast majority of juvenile crimes are not violent, and that young offenders who are treated as adults fuck off a bigger threat to society because they are deprived of efforts to rehabilitate them, which are rarer in the adult system.” The arrest rate for violent juvenile crime has fallen for four years in a row and 23 percent since 1994; according to the Juvenile Justice Department report released this month. The arrest rate for murders by juveniles has dropped 40 percent in the very(prenominal) period. Since 1992 in Massachusetts, the juvenile crime rate has declined, hitherto the number of minors committed to the Division of Youth Services has doubled.\r\nMinors are also receiving sentences twice as long as they were before the state passed the Youthful Offender Law in 1996, DYS said (Palmer, 1999). If this rate is declining is there a need to make harsher laws for minors? A study funded by the MacArthur substructure and released in December by Frank Zimring, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, also found that juvenile crime rates had not increased over time. â€Å"Legislative exercise around the nation has been motivated by the smack of a national youth violence emergency,” he said. But, Zimring added, those changes were driven by flawed analysis of statistics (Palmer, 1999). When looking at statistics you must look for fallacies in th e reports. Also, on September 29th, the Washington Post Newspapers states, â€Å"60% of children who are referred to a juvenile court learn their lesson the first time.” They never cause troubles again. The public rarely hears the advantageously news in the juvenile court systems. This only if tells us, they do deserve a second chance.\r\nLionel Tate, 14, is religious service a life sentence for the first-degree murder of 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick in July 1999 when he was 12. He is appealing. The governor rejected his postulation for clemency last year. The minor, who never testified at his trial, talks with state Department of Juvenile Justice authorities. â€Å"I really don’t have anything to say to the judge other than I didn’t indirect request to be found guilty,” Tate told his interviewer following his conviction. â€Å"I neediness the day never happened. I didn’t mean to hurt Tiffany, and I feel real pitiable and sorry for her and ( her mother)? If I could repeat that day, I wouldn’t play wrestle with Tiffany” (Reeves, 2001).\r\nBy looking at his statement you can tell that Tate was just repetition what he saw on T.V. He did not shoot, stab or kill the little missy with any objects of any kind. This shows that it was not his intent on killing her. Regardless of what happened a 14 year old does not deserve to be bolted up the rest of his life. What does it say about our society when we lock up our youth? To me it says that we don’t cope about their futures and would rather just get them out of sight so that they are out of mind. We cannot give up on our youth.\r\nIn conclusion, the topic of juvenile justice and sentencing minors with adult penalties is a heat debate. Many elected officials go for the quick-fix solutions. The media will ceaselessly show the worst of juvenile crime, and not any positive which makes people feel that there is a huge problem. Minors should not be tried as ad ults in our society today. Bad quick fixes such as Proposition 21 does not help, it sends us as a society a step back. Juvenile crime does exist and youths do commit violent acts. However, it is not on the casing that many people would like the public to believe. The statistics don’t lie, juvenile crime is falling.\r\nThe solution is to this problem is not a simple one and cannot be solved by simply putting kids in adult prisons or propositions. More effective solutions should be explored and put to use. We need to have faith in out juvenile system. There is a maturation willingness to turn a cold shoulder to life’s losers. Even when those losers happen to be kids. replacement seems to be out and retribution is in. The law created the be line between minors and adults, but now everyone wants to ignore the definition because the crime got more misfortunate. The minor is still a minor, no matter how ugly the act.\r\n'