It is generally agreed that “kids are kids,” until they commit a serious crime. A juvenile is classified as someone under 18, yet when a juvenile even as young as 8-years-old commits an egregious, violent crime that kid is no longer excused as a kid. Juvenile justice and punishment is a controversial topic since societal norms accept the difference between children and adults in numerous ways. If juveniles are limited from all kinds of social benefits and freedom that an adult has, why should they be treated as adults when it comes to the bad decisions they made by an underdeveloped brain. For someone of any age, the primary objective of criminal prosecution is to punish and rehabilitate, and I believe rehabilitation is …show more content…
There is a multitude of factors that come into the prosecution of a juvenile; studies have shown that the causes of juveniles committing crimes include family issues, drug use, peer pressure, problems in school and a lack of adult supervision. The article, “Kids Are Kids—Until They Commit Crimes,” further supports the claim that juveniles can be affected by outside factors; the article explains that young children learn by imitating what they see, so television can be a powerful teacher. These factors are more likely to drive kids to commit especially heinous crimes compared to adults due to a child’s ability to learn and adapt to what they see. Unlike adults, juveniles can more easily change and it is this ability to be influenced that shows that kids are more apt to be rehabilitated. Since rehabilitation is a part of the criminal system, prosecutors should put more focus on that, over trying to punish them like adults. It has been studied that children have “an enormous capacity to change” and that “The same malleability that makes them vulnerable to peer pressure also makes them promising candidates for rehabilitation” (Garinger), according to the article, “Juveniles Don’t Deserve Life Sentences.” It does not mean that juveniles that commit serious crimes should go unpunished, but the main goal is to set them on