A Story Of Application Of Felony Murder Rule On Juveniles (Essay Sample)

A Story of Application of Felony Murder Rule on Juveniles
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ABSTRACT
This report exhausts the ethnographic case study of a young man, 15 years of age and his admission into prison due to the application of the felony murder rule that applies in many parts of the United States of America, Illinois being one of them. The study was conducted in the state of Illinois after I encountered many related questions during my time as a volunteer at the Illinois legal Aids Online platform. I interviewed up to thirty participants from Illinois, legal officers, parents, youth and ex-convicts on the felony murder rule had applied. The research utilised more than 200 pages of interviews that had been transcribed. The study took me three weeks, working from Monday to Friday of every day as shown in my volunteers schedule attached at the appendix of this paper.
A Story of Application of Felony Murder Rule on Juveniles is aimed at providing answers to the following questions: What are the different interpretations of this rule by the various stakeholders? How are the attitudes of the people interviewed towards the rule characterised? What role does the community play in preparing the juvenile for inclusion in prison for a felony? How did each participant describe the process of sentencing the juvenile to nine years in jail for murder? Do the accounts of the various respondents suggest an alignment or tensions due to conflict of opinions? What was the consequence of these tensions or alignments on the application of the rule?
INTRODUCTION
After the attainment of independence in the US, many states in the country made amendments to their laws to curb the worrying rise in cases of crime. One of the enactments that were made was the inclusion of the felony murder rule. This law classified serious criminal offences as a felony. Here, the accomplices of a dead aggressor were to be charged with murder regardless of whether they were present or not at the time the crime took place. The law assumed that if an accomplice died in a criminal activity, then his or her accomplices had to be accountable because they contributed in one way or the other in his or her death. In light of this, the report is built around a case of a juvenile that was charged with felonious murder. The researcher chose Illinois as the most appropriate site for the study because the first ruling was made her. Research data was collected through numerous interviews that were conducted on legal officials, parents and ex-convicts under the same rule. The research intended to make an inference about the society by applying symbolic interactionism to the case.
Symbolic interactionism is a sociological framework that heavily relies on the symbolic meanings that people form or develop and depend on in the process of interacting with each other (Blumer, 1986). Max Weber first argued that people’s actions are informed to the interpretations that they make the world they live in. He was first among the many sociologists that have attempted to define the approach to sociological studies. George Herbert made modifications to Weber’s definition by arguing that this approach helps in the analysis of the society and the subjective meanings that the people attach to behaviours, objects and events (Charon & Cahill, 1979). The various interpretations that are attached to the things and events are referred to as ‘the definition of the situation’. This approach is important to my case because it helps one to understand the reason behind the involvement of youth in criminal and the various definitions that they attach to situations because of their vulnerability and gullibility associated to their age.
Literature review
Symbolic interactionism lays great emphasis on the symbols and the language that helps us to attach some sort of meanings to the experiences that we go through in our lives (Manis et.al, 1972). There an individual interacts with the world, the more he/she changes the meanings that he or she attaches to social interactions. It is common for one to spend a lot of time to think on their next line of action because it is the nature of human beings to adjust their behaviour according to their beliefs of the perception that people have about them.
According to many social interactionists, the reality that we know is formed by interactions and communications (Sandstrom et.al, 2006). Put differently, the beliefs that are championed by the symbolic interactionists postulate that reality is construed in the society in the sense that is a creation of then many ideas, thoughts and the conversations that take place in our lives. Previously, the emphasis was put on the interactions that people had face-to-face. However, it is prudent to take into consideration other types of interaction such as online experiences, written communication, and mobile phone text messaging.
A major take away from the explanation above is that individuals possess the power to influence the order in the world and do not merely need to be victims of the forces of the world. In addition to that, the change that individuals cause in the world is ever-changing. There are many real life examples that can be used for one to understand this approach well. If you happen to have a sister with whom you always clash because of conflict of interests, ten such conflicts are only brought about by the numerous interactions and communications that take place between the two of you. In addition to that, any event that your sister participates in has a symbolic meaning attached to it. For instance, if she gets a promotion at her place of work within the first year of working, you will still be tempted to think that the promotion came because she always gets what she wants yet you don’t. This is a classic illustration to show that the interactions that take place two people play a major role influencing how an individual interprets various actions and events.
George Herbert Mead is one of the sociologists that laid the foundations for the study of the frameworks that can assist in the study of sociology. He came up with the concept of self by defining it an organism that is dynamic and exists on its own (Snow, 2001). According to him, the self is divided into two parts; I and me. I am defined as that spontaneous disorganised that response that an individual gives to other people’s attitudes. On the other hand, George defines ‘me’ as the perspectives about the self that an individual interprets from other people’s organised attitudes.
In addition to that, Charles Cooley played a major role in the formulation of the symbolic interactionism theory. His major contribution is referred to as the ‘looking glass self’, where e argues that an individual is what he or she thinks others think of him or her (Stryker, 1980). Put differently, the theory implies that individuals perceive themselves by how they feel others perceive them. According to Herbert Blumer, the behaviours exhibited by people are determined by what meanings such behaviours bring to them. The said meanings are in turn derived from the interactions that take place between an individual and his or her peers. Additionally, it is worth noting that the meanings that people attach to things and events continuously change depending on the interpretation by the individual.
One of the social cultures observed within Illinois is people ...