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Kids Are Kids Until They Commit Crime
In her 2001 newspaper article, "Kids Are Kids Until They Commit Crime," Marjie Lundstrum argues against the criminal justice policy of treating juvenile offenders who commit heinous crimes (including murder) as adults. She relies heavily on rhetorical argument, such as posing questions asking how old a twelve-year-old defendant really is and whether he is a boy or a man. The obvious purpose of the author's rhetoric is to appeal to the audience to object to the punishment of any juveniles as adults, regardless of the severity of their crimes. The author emphasizes one particular line of argument: namely, that teenagers are not considered to be adults in any other aspect of their lives and that all of the common rules of society about the rights and privileges of teenagers is based on the fact that they are not yet capable of adult reasoning and that they lack mature judgment. In that regard,...
The point of that line of reasoning is that it is already fully understood in our society, at least in every other context, that children and teenagers lack the ability to make valid decisions because of their age. On the other hand, as her title suggests, when children or teenagers commit serious crimes, they are often treated as adults, despite the fact that they are still considered children in all other respects.
Clearly, the author hopes to convince her readers that it is logically inconsistent and fundamentally unfair to subject children and teenagers to adult criminal penalties when they are still considered incapable of making decisions in every other respect. Her principal point is simply that society cannot have it both ways: if children and teenagers are too young to make decisions, then they are also too young to be…
In his 2003 article, "Many Kids Called Unfit For Adult Trial," Greg Krikorian presents an argument against the charging of teenage criminal as adults that focuses on the constitutional principle of mental competence. Specifically, Krikorian argues that studies of the comprehension levels of teenagers below the age of sixteen demonstrate that they lack the necessary intellectual, reasoning, and other cognitive skills to fully understand the justice system and the consequences of their actions and statements. According to Krikorian, the fact that they are mentally unable to participate in their own defense to criminal charges makes charging them and trying them as adults unconstitutional for the same reason that insane criminals cannot be tried criminally under the U.S. Constitution.
Krikorian suggests that if children aged 11 to 13 are three times as likely and children aged 14 to 15 are twice as likely to have mental capacities that are the equivalent to that of mentally impaired adults, that no children who commit crimes should ever be tried as adults.
It is an interesting argument, but even if the point is valid with respect to certain teenagers, there is no reason that it should necessarily apply to all teenagers of the same age. The author does not seem to acknowledge that even by his own figures, many teenagers are not incapable of higher level reasoning. Therefore, at most, Krikorian's argument would support a requirement to conduct a psychological and intellectual evaluation of teenager facing adult criminal charges. With respect to those who cannot reason any better than an impaired adult, the author may be right that trying them as adults violates a constitutional principle. However, with respect to those who are capable of complex reasoning, Krikorian's criticism would seem not to apply at all.
Children who commit crimes of violence be tried as adults in the criminal justice system? Juveniles should be treated as adults in the criminal justice system. The paper is an analysis of this view and also deals with an opposing argument. Most societies seek a sort of "revenge" on the habitual offenders of its norms of behavior and this is termed as retribution. In the case of young offenders, this is
Crime As Schmalleger explains, the American juvenile-justice system was designed a century ago to reform kids found guilty of minor crimes, but more and more, the system has to cope with more violent crimes committed by younger people. The response on the part of lawmakers has been largely to siphon the worst of these young people out of the juvenile system by lowering the age at which juveniles charged with serious
Race, Class & Crime The confluence of race, class and crime is a hot topic nowadays. This is especially true when discussing events or topics of various types. Very or fairly specific examples of this would include the recent shooting of Mike Brown in Ferguson, MO and the subsequent non-indictment of the officer who shot him despite the fact that Brown was not armed and the ongoing discussion about how paying
Crime and Punishment Ours is an extremely violent kind of world where even the most common type of folk can find themselves faced with types of unspeakable horrors and criminal activity through little or no intention of their own. In American literature, a common theme is the concept of the freedom of choice and how a person's choices come to affect not only themselves, but all of the people around them.
Crimes in the Bay Area One of the most violent and consistent crimes in the San Francisco Bay Area results from gangs; gang violence is generally not visited on the general public, but rather, gangs in the Bay Area aim their violent assaults on each other. Recently the City of San Francisco has beefed up its "Community Response Network" and has allocated $30,000 in an effort for city officials and police
Lowenstein) These children also might see their own feelings of a wish to do physical harm toward another reflected in the feelings of others, the psychological term known as projection, and may be afraid or paranoid of others intentions. Sometimes the criminal act of murder is an extension of previous anti-social acts of less serious forms of delinquency and criminality and children merely graduate to more extended and more violent and extreme