Juveniles in Adult Court

Juveniles in Adult Court

English 101

May 4, 2010

Essay 5

Juveniles should not be prosecuted as an adult because of age, jail environment, and mental maturity. Children these years are too young to go to jail and being prosecuted as adult because they haven’t experience life yet. Also they don’t know right from wrong, they also believe that everything they see on television is exciting and want to try it for themselves. For an example a “12 year old boy was interviewed in a maximum-security prison yard. When asked what he had done to warrant being in the prison, the youngster related how he had been spotted by local police as he drove a stolen car. After a high-speed chase, he crashed into an interstate highway roadblock. Several state and local law enforcement agencies and dozens of police cars were involved. The interviewer asked if the child was sorry for what he had done because it had resulted in a sentence to an adult maximum-security prison. The boy responded that he would do it again because it was the "greatest day" of his life! "It was just like `Smokey and the Bandit' [a popular chase film]! He stated"(Smith)

They also charged children as adults and throw them in jail for minor crimes, Life quickly went downhill for 15-year-old Anthony Laster of West Palm Beach, Fla., after he grabbed $2 in lunch money from a classmate. The charges were strong-arm robbery and extortion, and under Florida's tough juvenile justice system Anthony faced the extraordinary prospect of life in an adult prison. Meanwhile, because his family could not afford his $500 bail, he spent four weeks in the county jail. He was released due to mentally disabled and communicated on the level of a 5-year-old. (Hansen)

An adult prison is not a good environment for young children do to the chaos and crazy thing that happens in there. Adults in the jail are bad influence because it is easy to put things in to children heads to make them believe what they been told. And the...