Why Juveniles should be tried as Adults after getting Involved in Criminal Activities (Essay Sample)

Juveniles Should Be Tries as Adults
Student’s Name:
Professor’s Name:
Course:
Date:
Juveniles Should Be Tries as Adults
There are innumerable reasons why a juvenile should be tried as an adult after they have been involved in a crime. Reasons such as behavior or the way they are raised as they grow up can result in the juvenile’s actions. Issues such a mental illness, peer pressure, and childhood trauma which may cause them to act out also come into play in some cases. The purpose of this study is to justify why juveniles should be tried as adults in a court of law if they are involved in committing a crime.
To carefully understand the topic, a lot of issues have to be considered to determine whether the juvenile is aware when they are committing a particular crime; whether they can distinguish between wrong-doing and what is right. It is therefore important to carry out a serious evaluation of the child.[Woody, Robert H. Helping children and adolescents: Evidence-based strategies from developmental and social psychology. Hogrefe Publishing, 2011.]
The child’s socioeconomic status, mental state, and societal environment have to be considered to come up with the right evaluation. Scientific evidence shows that adolescents’ minds are incapable of reasoning like normal adults thus evaluation has to be carried out to determine whether the child can distinguish right from wrong. There is no clear precise age at when a child is said to be able to distinguish the two. Furthermore, the part of the brain responsible for this kind of function is not fully developed until around the age of twenty-three years.[Monahan, Kathryn, Laurence Steinberg, and Alex R. Piquero. "Juvenile justice policy and practice: A developmental perspective." Crime and justice 44, no. 1 (2015): 577-619.]
Therefore, it can be a huge argument before then to make a precise decision. However, in recent studies, it has been observed that juvenile delinquency is mostly associated with children who lack parental care, live in the streets, or have been exposed to childhood psychological trauma causing mental illness.