In the United States of America, we are really concerned about juvenile crimes today and many people think that serious juvenile offenders should be sentenced as adults. I think people who are under eighteen years of age should not be sentenced as adults because there are lots of negative effects for juveniles if they spend most of their life time in jail. Delinquent youths are not the only ones accountable for their crimes. Their family and society are also accountable for their misbehaviors. Rather than sending them to jail, young people need re-education rather than punishment.
Teenage offenders are in a grave physical, emotional, and mental danger when institutionalized. They will be easily physically abused, such as being raped, stabbed, or beaten. Delinquent teenagers will be scarred emotionally and mentally forever by those violent actions. Some offenders who are not violent will gradually become violent while they are forced to share the same cell and eat together with mentally ill criminals. Although many officers are patrolling inside these juvenile facilities, there are too many inmates for officers to oversee, and in some cases officers are the ones who are doing the raping, stabbing, or beating. As a result, violent behaviors between inmates are unavoidable, and indeed are the way of life on the “inside” often leading to “the whole”. However, juveniles who are placed in isolation cells are at a high risk of committing suicide.
Children are born with no preconceived notions and no experience. They build their behavior and character through observation of the environment around them. Youngsters who are under 18 years old are very sensitive to everything such as general advertisements and their society’s behavior. Today, lots of advertisings, music, movies, internet information, even games are involving sex and violence. Young people will easily get these negative images without their parents’ permission. Many crimes such as rape and felonious assaults are continually happening in our community. If our children’s parents and school don’t take care of what they are doing, then our youngsters will have no clue of what they should do and what they should not do. They especially have difficulty thinking of the consequences of their actions under stressful situations without adults’ supervision.
When a tragedy has happened, nothing can be reversed. It’s really a sad story especially when a criminal offender is a juvenile in the case. Do we really solve the problem by sending a child to a 20 or 30 year jail sentence, as an adult when he commits a serious crime? After a 20 or 30 years in jail, this teen will become ever so much more angry and violent to commit other more atrocious crimes in the future because he is still mentally ill or has become mentally ill as a result of his lengthy incarceration. Offenders who are released from jail still don’t understand and realize their problems. As a result, we will have an increasing rate of juvenile crimes in our society because long sentences are not the cure. Putting our children into prisons or executing them is exactly the slavish system that worked in ancient times. Now, are we in a civilized and progressive era? If so, we should educate our juveniles instead of punishing them as adults when their parents and society have failed them. We must give the young criminal a chance to disclose what they’re thinking and feeling in order to give them the proper mental treatment such as community-based programs where they can learn the results of cause and effect and social responsibility.
Helping and educating our troubled youth must be always our goal for now and the future. They need re-education as they develop towards a full comprehension of the impacts of their actions. Thinking of all disadvantages to the youth offenders as being sentenced as adults, we definitely know this is not a good way to solve their problems and to stop the crime. Why can’t we use the positive way to psychological and mentally resolving our juvenile's problem instead of isolating, physical punishing, or killing them? Yes, we absolutely have the choice if we want.