Why Juveniles Should be Tried As Adults Introduction
Think tanks behind the juvenile justice systems intended to create rehabilitative mechanisms to reform juvenile offenders of minor crimes. However, it seems as if the youth perpetrate their crimes because they know that they do not stand punished by the juvenile justice system (Flesch 583). Suffice to say, the youths are protected by the outdated justice system that fails to nab the offenders and treat them like so. In order for a society to feel accommodated in the process of administration of justice and to deter more juveniles from perpetrating these serious crimes, criminals should be held accountable regardless of their age (Flesch 583; Pullmann 484).
Thesis statement
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To preempt similar crimes from occurring, juvenile offenders should be tried as adults if circumstances demand that they be tried under the criminal justice system.
Critical Analysis
The purpose of juvenile Justice System
Contrary to some views, a proposal to try the youth as adults should not be construed to mean waging war on juveniles. Instead, it is a war to end the immeasurable loss of life, damage to property and damage to the moral fabric of the society. Retaining juvenile justice system and applying it regardless of the kind of crimes meted against innocent citizens is a systematic failure on the part of the government to redress the worrying situation (Russel 380).
Opponents of this proposal to try juvenile offenders as adults have raised their concerns about the punitiveness and ignorance of the correctional and educational aspects around juvenile recidivism. They have argued that changes in the law to include punishment for juvenile offenders is a concerted effort by the rich white to disenfranchise the youth, the colored and the poor in the society (Pullmann 486).
To hold such a sensational view in the wake of heightened insecurity (that is presided over by the same youth) is to deliberately shut our ears and close our eyes to the realities on the ground. It is a clear determination to blind ourselves from listening to the cries of the victims of these crimes. It is the failure to put ourselves in the same situation of the parents whose sons and daughters are shot every day. The same thinking protects and validates 16- and 17-year-old boys who stabbed someone else’s parents in the head (Pullmann 488).
Many preventable criminal acts perpetrated by the youth have for many years plagued the American society, but little has been done to deliver justice to the victims because offenders have escaped punishment because of their age. Protected by a less effective, retrogressive and lenient juvenile justice system, violent juveniles have continued to take advantage of the treatment and have held the society at ransom.
High profile killings and slayings have been the order of the day, and often we see many people lose their valuable lives in the hands of youth offenders. Punishment has been found to deter people, including the young from exhibiting bad behavior. In learning theory, punishment can serve as a negative reinforcement to discourage bad behavior and reinforce positive behavior instead (Pullmann 484). Using this proven learning theory, it follows that subjecting juveniles to adult punishment will be the only viable way of stopping rampant crimes in the city streets.