Juvenile Justice

In the United States, Juvenile Justice should be brought to people's attention. Some people think that juveniles should be charged as adults but others don’t think so. It all just depends on the factors, but also I believe juveniles should be charged as adults.

In all juvenile crimes the judge should and must look at all factors from both victims and criminals side. Those factors could be age, school life, and family/home life for both victim and criminal, any background information including criminal history, rehabilitation, parole, and probation, connection between victim and suspect. Also, they should do tests on the juvenile to see if they is mentally something wrong their brain development for their age, and other mental/brain situations.

In all honesty, I believe it would be fair if juveniles are tried as adults. The reason I believe that is because minors know what they are doing, whether it’s stealing anything from a store, tagging on public walls or someone’s house, and sadly, hurting someone else such as murder. If a minor knows what he or she is doing they should obviously be tried as an adult. Why, because if they know what they did was wrong and that they are going to be consequences. At a certain age is when most things make sense to these kids and they process everything their parents taught them. At a point in these minors life before they are at least 10-years-old, they know what’s wrong or not, and knows the meaning of consequences for every action they do wrong. They know this because in school even in preschool, and elementary you do something that you are not suppose to do or say something mean, you get a consequence whether it’s time-out, detention, etc.

If they have the mental capacity to do a serious crime, they have the mental capacity to have a consequence whether it’s parlon, jail, house arrest, or something else. They should also have the mental capacity to be tried as adults.

The fact that these kids can have any type of crime on their minds is scary. Look at this world today, on November 14, 2019, there was a shooting in Santa Clarita at Saugus High School where 2 victims died, and 3 were injured. CNN reporters Jason Hanna, Cheri Mossburg, and Steve Almasy stated “two victims -- a 16-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy -- died at a hospital. Three students were wounded … Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said the 16-year-old suspected gunman is in critical condition. He used the last bullet from a .45-caliber pistol on himself, authorities said” (CNN, 2019). Later that day the gunman himself died. If that 16-year-old gunman survived I believe he should have been tried as an adult, because he pulled a gun out of his backpack and killed 2 teens. The fact that he had the ability and mental ability to hurt others and himself just shows why these minors who commit crimes like these should be tried as adults.

In this world today, I believe these juveniles should be tried as adults. Any minor can commit a crime and get away with it but they shouldn’t anymore. These juveniles know what they are doing and they should be able to handle these consequences.