Adolescents Tried as Adults: Arguments For and Against Sentencing Juveniles as Adults
A great concern in today’s American society is how to deal with deviant young people. Certainly there is a need for punishment, but what type of punishment, how long, and for what crimes is up for debate. As it stands in California anyone between the ages of 14 and 17 may be tried as an adult under the circumstances that said person is deemed ‘unfit’ for rehabilitation, is being tried for a crime that has been predestined to be an automatic adult trial, and/or the lawsuit is filed in adult criminal court (Wallin & Klarich). Some evidence suggests that adolescents should not be tried as adults under any circumstances due to why adolescents commit crimes, their ability for reform due to ever changing psychological development, and the adverse effects adult-type punishment can have on young people. There may also be flawed reasoning in regards to determining if a young person is ‘unfit’ for rehabilitation based on criteria used in a juvenile court fitness hearing. However, there is also the notion that certain unforgivably heinous crimes deserve life-long prison sentences (a punishment reserved for ‘adults’) regardless of who committed said crimes.
Against
Minors should not be tried as adults for the simple reason that minors are, in fact, not adults. Beyond this, there is some questionability in the criteria used in determining the ‘fitness’ of an adolescent for rehabilitation. This is problematic because an adolescent seen as ‘unfit’ may be tried as an adult. The Wallin & Klarich law firm includes the following as criteria considered in a juvenile fitness hearing: degree of criminal sophistication, if the minor can be rehabilitated before becoming an adult (according to legal age), previous delinquent history, success of previous attempts to rehabilitate, and circumstances and gravity of the alleged offense.
It should be noted that presuming a child is ‘criminally sophisticated’ is a stretch of the imagination, at the very least. Few adolescents are actually capable of that type of thinking. In fact, studies show that adolescents have difficulty foreseeing the future and any consequences their actions have on the future (Steinberg, 469). It is also true that adolescents are immature by nature. Zimring proposes that this immaturity should be an excuse and a mitigating circumstance for determining punishment of young people (273). Children simply do not think like adults. To say the average child is ‘criminally sophisticated’ is incorrect and is not a valid reason for trying them as an adult.
While there may be some disagreement in today’s society as to whether or not adults are able to be rehabilitated, a plethora of evidence exists showing that young people are able to learn from past transgressions and change. Development of the brain continues until age 16 and often into the twenties (Steinburg, 466–468). By concluding that a child is not able to be rehabilitated is to ignore the science of brain development throughout adolescence. Additionally, a young person is highly susceptible to peer pressure which leads to “group offending,” a phenomenon that is unlikely to occur in any other age range (Zimring, 281). The child’s brain is not done developing, meaning they are likely to change and mature. A child should not be tried as an adult because it is incorrect to conclude that a child is not amenable to rehabilitation.
There is the assumption that children tried as adults are not open to being rehabilitated, and as such must be sent to adult prison. In this is the twisted logic that adults are unable to reform and return to society, which then begs the question of why society imprisons the massive amounts of people that it does. And because it is believed that adult criminals are not able to reform, prison conditions suffer. Though the evidence regarding prison conditions were not included in our discussion of youth crime and punishment, I feel it is important to discuss. As it stands, many people come out of prison worse than when they went in. My father, employed by a Pennsylvania prison, attests to this fact. He has seen many men go out into the world and come right back to prison. Clearly prison is not rehabilitating. Moreover, as we have discussed in class, the psychological effects of being in solitary confinement are unforgivably destructive. If an adult cannot come out of solitary confinement with full mental health, then how could a child? I raise this question because of the simple fact that an adolescent sentenced to adult prison will likely be put into solitary confinement as a form of protection (as noted by Dr. Wolfe). No one deserves the negative impact that solitary confinement has, especially not young minds.
There are crimes that only an adolescent can commit, dubbed status offenses, which can build up a child’s record, such as truancy, running away, and underage drinking, to name a few (Jafarian & Ananthakrishnan, 2–3). These types of deviant behaviors are criminalized and punished, yet the reason behind committing such crimes is really not addressed. We discussed in class that the reasons for some of these crimes may exempt the child from punishment. For example, a teen may be chronically late to school because they must take care of their younger siblings. Or, a child who is reported as having runaway may have run away from home not because they are a moody teenager but because they are experiencing some form of abuse in the home (Jafarian & Ananthakrishnan, 9). Yet, the school still calls in the law for truancy and the abusive parent still calls the law to get their kid back and ultimately the child is punished for it by having a record that does not explain the reason behind the deviant behavior. If a young person has a ‘delinquent history’ it may not be so clear cut as the adolescent is simply a deviant person. Because of this, taking into account the previous delinquent history is questionable at the very least. It should not be causation for trying a young person as an adult.
Additionally, the reason an adolescent commits a crime or multiple crimes has much to do with that child’s environment. We saw in the film They Call Us Monsters that young people join gangs and are often required to do something against the law because of this. By simply being in a gang, the law seems to come down harder on these kids because of the violence associated with gang activity. Rarely is it taken into consideration why these children join gangs. In fact, young people join gangs because they feel safer with protection and being part of a gang feels more like a family than the family they actually have (discussed in class; documentaries on gang activity). While in the American Culture Program, we discussed how some young people (particularly in the projects in regards to cocaine) become an entrepreneur in the underground economy of drugs in order to make money and help their family survive. In this light, it is not really fair to punish these young people for trying to survive, or even for just being kids. It is even more unfair to decide that a background in deviant activity means these children are suited to be tried as adults and ‘thrown away’ in the prison system, as activist Bryan Stevenson put it.
To be frank, it does not seem that imprisoning young people, in juvenile detention centers or in adult prisons, is truly the type of response that will help society and the young person recover. Just as the adult prison system does little to rehabilitate people in them, nor do juvenile detention centers help young people reform. This was evidenced in the film They Call us Monsters. Antonio, arrested at age 14, was set free into the world after being in a juvenile detention center. He returned to a disheveled family life and soon began using drugs. Many would agree that he was not rehabilitated by the system. This was not because of any failing on his part, but a failure of the system itself. By not addressing the reasons crimes are committed, many deviant young people are not able to get out of situations that result in their criminal activity. In this way, previous rehabilitation attempts is not a good criteria for determining if a young person should be tried as an adult.
For
There are some crimes that society finds heinously unforgivable and deserve life in prison or even death, regardless of how old the perpetrator is. Yet, the law in California prohibits life in prison without parole for juveniles. In order to be tried as an adult, the adolescent in question must be accused of committing some type of violent crime such as murder, rape, assault, or robbery (Wallin & Klarich). Certainly if the juvenile fits all criteria (as previously described) for being ‘unfit’ for rehabilitation, that child should be tried as an adult for a viscous assault (sexual, fatal, or other). Based on information I’ve garnered from psychology courses and the media, a serial killer may start young. If a sociopathic serial killer were caught and dealt with immediately, many lives could be saved. Sociopaths-turned-serial-killers are rare cases, however. In the same sense, sadistic, violent offenders are not prevalent in society.
Conclusion
Based on what we have learned in class, through readings, discussions, and videos, I am largely against trying young people as adults. Looking at this through the California law, I am even more averse to this idea because their criteria for trying a child as an adult is questionable at best. Yet, there are unique cases where a youth is a violent sociopath or a sadist and if they are not dealt with as an adult and put into prison for life, they may very well harm many more people. In these rare cases, I can almost reconcile with the criteria used in the juvenile fitness hearing. In the end though, kids are kids. Jafarian and Ananthakrishnan said it best, “[M]any kids just need time to grow up and figure things out” (7).
Works Cited
Jafarian, Mahsa, and Vidhya Ananthakrishnan. “Just Kids: When Misbehaving Is a Crime.” Vera, Models for Change, 19 Sept. 2017, www.vera.org/when-misbehaving-is-a-crime#introduction.
Lear, Ben, director. They Call Us Monsters. Netflix, The Orchard BMP Films, 2016, www.netflix.com/watch/
Steinberg, Laurence. “Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice.” The Annual Review of Clinical Psychology 5(2009):459–485. Print. doi:10.1146/annurev.clinpsy.032408.153603
Wallin & Klarich Law Firm. Juvenile Sentencing in California. Provided in e-mail.
Zimring, Franklin E. “Penal Proportionality for the Young Offender: Notes on Immaturity, Capacity, and Diminished Responsibility.” Youth on trial: A developmental perspective on juvenile justice. Eds. T. Grisso & R. G. Schwartz. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. 271–289.
