Juveniles Tried as Adults: A Rhetorical Analysis
This paper analyzes two journalistic arguments against the practice of trying juvenile offenders as adults in the American criminal justice system. The first, Marjie Lundstrom's 2001 article "Kids Are Kids Until They Commit Crime," uses rhetorical appeals to highlight the logical inconsistency of treating teenagers as adults only when they commit crimes. The second, Greg Krikorian's 2003 article "Many Kids Called Unfit for Adult Trial," builds a constitutional argument grounded in studies of cognitive development and mental competence. The paper evaluates the strengths and limitations of each argument, noting that while both raise legitimate concerns, Krikorian's position in particular may be overly broad in its application to all juveniles.
- Introduction: The Debate Over Trying Juveniles as Adults: Overview of juvenile justice and two key articles
- Lundstrom's Rhetorical Argument Against Adult Prosecution: Lundstrom's rhetorical case against adult prosecution
- The Logical Inconsistency at the Heart of Juvenile Justice: Society cannot treat teens as adults selectively
- Krikorian's Constitutional Competence Argument: Krikorian links teen cognition to constitutional rights
- Evaluating the Limits of Krikorian's Position: Statistical argument does not apply to all teens
- Conclusion: Both arguments raise legitimate but limited concerns
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper maintains a clear analytical stance throughout, summarizing each author's argument accurately before offering pointed critical evaluation.
- It identifies a genuine logical flaw in Krikorian's position — that statistical averages cannot justify a blanket rule — without dismissing the argument entirely.
- The comparison between two related but distinct argumentative strategies (rhetorical appeal vs. constitutional principle) gives the paper intellectual structure.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates source critique: rather than simply restating what each article argues, the writer engages critically with the internal logic of each position. The analysis of Krikorian is especially strong — the paper concedes the argument has merit in some cases while identifying the overgeneralization that limits its force. This shows the ability to partially accept and partially refute a claim, a hallmark of strong analytical writing.
Structure breakdown
The paper is organized around two discrete article analyses, each introduced with full bibliographic context. The first section summarizes and endorses Lundstrom's rhetorical consistency argument. The second section introduces Krikorian's competence-based argument and then pivots into critical evaluation, noting that even the author's own statistics do not support a universal rule. The conclusion synthesizes both positions implicitly through the critique of Krikorian's overgeneralization.
Introduction: The Debate Over Trying Juveniles as Adults
The question of whether juvenile offenders should be tried as adults is one of the most contested issues in American juvenile justice. Two journalistic articles — Marjie Lundstrom's 2001 piece "Kids Are Kids Until They Commit Crime" and Greg Krikorian's 2003 piece "Many Kids Called Unfit for Adult Trial" — each argue against the practice, though from distinct angles. Lundstrom relies on rhetorical appeals and a consistency-based argument, while Krikorian grounds his case in empirical research on adolescent cognitive development and the constitutional requirement of mental competence. Together, they represent two of the most common objections to prosecuting minors under adult criminal law. Each argument has genuine force, but each also has identifiable limitations.
Lundstrom's Rhetorical Argument Against Adult Prosecution
In her 2001 newspaper article, Marjie Lundstrom argues against the criminal justice policy of treating juvenile offenders who commit heinous crimes — including murder — as adults. She relies heavily on rhetorical argument, posing questions such as how old a twelve-year-old defendant really is and whether he should be regarded as a boy or a man. The obvious purpose of this rhetoric is to appeal to readers to object to the punishment of any juvenile as an adult, regardless of the severity of the crime.
Lundstrom emphasizes one particular line of argument: that teenagers are not considered adults in any other aspect of their lives, and that all common social rules governing the rights and privileges of teenagers are premised on the recognition that young people are not yet capable of adult reasoning and lack mature judgment. She points out, for example, that teenagers cannot legally drink or smoke, and that children cannot legally drive. The point of this reasoning is that society already acknowledges, in virtually every other context, that children and teenagers lack the capacity to make fully informed, responsible decisions because of their age.
The Logical Inconsistency at the Heart of Juvenile Justice
As her title suggests, Lundstrom identifies a sharp inconsistency: when children or teenagers commit serious crimes, they are often treated as adults — despite the fact that they remain classified as children in all other respects. The author hopes to convince readers that it is both logically inconsistent and fundamentally unfair to subject young people to adult criminal penalties when they are still considered incapable of making sound decisions in every other domain of life.
Her principal point is that society cannot have it both ways. If children and teenagers are too young to make valid decisions generally, then they are also too young to be held fully accountable for decisions that happen to be very bad — including the decision to commit murder. This consistency argument is rhetorically powerful because it does not require readers to sympathize with the offender; it simply asks them to apply the same standard they already accept in non-criminal contexts.
Krikorian's Constitutional Competence Argument
In his 2003 article, Greg Krikorian presents a different argument against charging teenage criminals as adults — one that focuses on the constitutional principle of mental competence to stand trial. 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 cognitive skills to fully understand the justice system and the consequences of their actions and statements. Because they are mentally unable to participate meaningfully in their own defense, charging and trying them as adults is unconstitutional — for the same reason that individuals who are legally insane cannot be tried criminally under the U.S. Constitution.
Krikorian draws on research suggesting that children aged 11 to 13 are three times as likely as adults to have mental capacities equivalent to those of cognitively impaired adults, and that children aged 14 to 15 are twice as likely to fall into that category. On the basis of these findings, he argues that no child who commits a crime should ever be tried as an adult.
Conclusion
Both Lundstrom and Krikorian raise serious concerns about the practice of trying juvenile offenders as adults, each from a distinct angle. Lundstrom's rhetorical and consistency-based argument is broadly persuasive but does not account for cases in which the gravity of the offense or the sophistication of the offender may warrant adult-level accountability. Krikorian's constitutional competence argument is more precisely grounded in research, but his leap from statistical probability to a universal rule for all minors is a logical overreach. Taken together, however, the two articles make a compelling cumulative case for at minimum requiring individualized competency assessments before any juvenile is subjected to adult criminal prosecution.
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