BY JULIET PEREZ
Staff Writer
I believe that no person under the age of 18 should be tried as an adult under any circumstance. Minors are not seen as adults in any other legal aspects, they are not allowed to drink alcohol or smoke until they are 21, they aren’t allowed to vote until they are 18, join the military until they are 17, nor are they allowed to make most legal decisions for themselves, so why is it okay to treat them as adults when it comes to prison? In a case where a child would be charged as an adult, they would end up incarcerated and put in adult prison. This puts them at risk for so many things such as mental health problems, sexual assault/abuse, and physical abuse. Putting them in prison alongside adults without allowing them the opportunity of receiving rehabilitation lowers their chance of ever getting better or having a future.
An article named, “Should 11-Year Olds be Charged With Adult Crimes?”, written by Philip Holloway, brings up the fact that the brain isn’t even fully developed until someone is in their 20s. This is why, as mentioned earlier, so many things are restricted until the age of 21. Brain development is a big factor to keep in mind when it comes to children who commit crimes. Because although children can tell the difference between right and wrong, and can hold culpability, their thought process is completely different from an adult’s would be. In another article by David Dobbs, named “Beautiful Brains”, it is said that during adolescence, humans take more risks than they do at any age. This is the age where drugs and drinking take a toll, mixed with the sensation to seek new feelings, this is a perfect mix for bad decisions. Because of this factor, punishing teens has to be different than how adults are handled. The thinking process and brain are different, and although teens are aware of their mortality and what they are doing their brains are wired completely differently. He says that “Teens take more risks not because they don’t understand the dangers but because they weigh risk versus reward differently: In situations where risk can get them something they want, they value the reward more heavily than adults do”. Dobbs even explains the physical changes that our brains endure during our teenage years and why they cloud our judgment. One of the changes can be described as the links that connect our hippocampus becoming stronger, this causes our decision-making to become more complex and sensible. But because these changes are so sudden, our brain can take them clumsily.
If that isn’t enough reason to keep children out of adult prison, another thing to consider is their safety. In prison facilities, children are at a high risk of sexual and physical abuse. In Holloway’s article, he mentions that children are FIVE times more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted while in prison. This type of abuse can lead to suicide, as juveniles are more likely to kill themselves in these conditions. While I do agree that anyone who commits crimes such as first-degree murder, manslaughter, etc. should be punished, the torture that these children would endure isn’t righteous and could actually be deemed as cruel or unusual punishment, which would then violate their eight amendment right. No one is saying that these kids shouldn’t be punished or held accountable for their actions, but what we are saying is that a child shouldn’t be punished the way an adult is. In fact, I believe that trying a child as an adult will just make them destined to become caught in the cycle of crime, they become isolated from society, and without rehabilitation, who’s to say that they won’t go and commit the same crime again.
In another article written by a victim of gun violence committed by a minor, named “On Punishment and Teen Killers”, Jennifer Bishop Jenkins, argues that minors should be tried as adults. One argument that she makes is that if the problem concerning crimes committed by children is the underdevelopment of the brain, then crime rates would be the same all around the world, however, crime rates committed by minors are alarmingly high in America. She says “If brain development were the reason, then teens would kill at roughly the same rates all over the world.” However, the reason why juvenile crime rates are so high in America is because of the incredibly easy access of guns and other weapons to teenagers and even children. Brain development is a heavy contributor to juvenile crime, and the only reason why it is so much more prominent in America is because of how easy it is for children to access weapons. If we look at gun violence rates around the world, America has the 2nd most gun deaths in the world, has the highest rate of gun ownership, and is by far the country with the most school shootings. 86% of homicides committed by juveniles are done by firearms. To say that the underdevelopment of a brain isn’t an important factor in crime is an understatement, and even then committing a murder doesn’t take much mental capacity, and committing a murder doesn’t make someone an adult. A 7-year-old can understand how murder is carried out, but that doesn’t make them have the same mental capacity as an adult, the problem is the easy access to weapons that make it so easy for children to commit these crimes.
Being tried as a minor doesn’t mean that they have to be let free once they hit 18 or 21, it just means that while they are still children they should be treated as so. Putting minors in a juvenile detention center not only helps them become rehabilitated but also gives them the chance to become reevaluated when they’re old enough to be put in an adult facility. The real problem within our prison system is the fact that we seem to want to find ways to punish criminals instead of rehabilitating them. The weight of the crime is obviously a very important factor here. If a child steals from a store or steals a car, I don’t believe that they should be sentenced to a long time in prison, but of course, if a child kills someone or does even worse, of course, they deserve to be put in a detention center for a very long time, probably until they are 18 and able to be transferred to an adult facility. But still, I do believe that before they turn 18, they should still only be tried as children. This gives them the opportunity to get mental health help and keep them safe from possible abuse, which could scar them even worse, and lead to a higher drive for a crime.