Juveniles Legal System

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Juveniles vs The Legal System In popular culture names like Eric Smith, Joshua Phillips, George Stinney, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson are just a few of well-known children due to the media buzz and controversial crimes they have committed. Such crimes range from murder of a family member, school shootings to even killing victims at random. This continues to spark much debate on whether we should charge these children as adults or seek them help before this problem can escalate. I think age plays an important factor. If the child is around 10 to 17 they are more than capable knowing right from wrong. Regardless I believe minors from the ages 10 to 17 who commit heinous murders should be charged as adults.

If we don’t charge minors for …show more content…
In other words most courtrooms base their sentences on the age of the child over the severity of the crime done. Some young killers show no remorse over what they had done but still may get a lesser sentence based on their age. Mary Bell murder two boys days before her 11th birthday strangling both boys in Scotswood. She also cut off the second boy’s genitals. Finally she proceeded to carve the letter “M” into his stomach. Regarded as psychotic she was put into government care and now lives under protected identity. If Mary was older she would most likely been arrested instead. The article, “Justices Consider the Role of Age in Life Sentences,” by Adam Liptak goes into discussion on how the legal system takes age into consideration. The article states, “...some juvenile offenders deserve life without parole, describing cases “so horrible that I couldn’t have imagined them if I hadn’t actually seen them” — “raping an 8-year-old girl and burying her alive” and “raping a woman in front of her 12-year-old son and then forcing the son to engage in sexual conduct with the mother.”...Outside the context of the death penalty, the court’s Eighth Amendment jurisprudence has not taken the offender’s age into consideration in deciding whether a sentence is proportional to the crime. Requiring sentencing judges to add age to the sentencing calculus would presumably make a difference in some but not all cases.” Quite interestingly most cases where a minor is being considered to be tried as an adult age seems to always be mentioned. This mostly includes cases that received national attention such as the before mentioned cases. However I still think age should be considered to a degree. Being charged as an adult does not guarantee a guilty verdict. If we charge juveniles as adults the whole process of court can show the child how serious the offense was. This can also help prevent the child from wanting to do
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