I'm currently 18. Legally an adult. I can legally smoke, legally buy pornography, legally go to strip clubs, legally have consensual sex with another adult, vote for who ever I want, and legally be convicted as an adult.
When I was 17 I could not smoke, nor look at any nudity, and in my state (along with others) it's illegal for two consenting "minors" to engage in sex (apparently the law was created to curb teenage pregnancies not stop rape.) Voting was a luxury I hadn't earned yet. I could still be convicted as an adult.
When I was 13 I didn't care what cigarettes were, sex was a pipe dreams, voting? Who cared! But still... I could be convicted as an adult.
Are you following my logic?
More and more often kids are being tried as adults, and convicted. I read an article that a 12 year old boy killed his grandparents and burned down the house. When he gets out of jail he'll be 42. I'm not saying what the kid did was right, but 42? That means he'll be in jail for his entire high school, college and young adult life! The time in life people look back on and claim are their golden years. There are other cases of course (it didn't go into specifics but it stated that children as young as 13 were given life sentences.) It's hard to believe isn't it, but I’ve been following such cases recently and it seems that one manifests its' self twice a month.
This troubles me. Shortly after my birthday my parents, teachers and family members all said the similar saying, "you better watch it now, you're an adult." An adult. Dose that mean a matter of months ago, if I had gotten in a fight I would get some form of mercy from the courts? No. They would have tried me as an adult, saying that I was well aware of my actions. My actions? How could I be aware of what I do when I’m not allowed to think for my self regarding smoking! I couldn't stay out past 10 due to an adolescent curfew.
Hypocrisy! That's what bothers me the most about this. That they say we're kids. They say we can't think for our selves. They think for us. But as soon as we slip up they say it's our fault that we should of thought for our selves. We can't think for ourselves if you're there thinking for us.
Young violent crimes have been on a rapid increase since 1990 (my birth year). Since then more and more children are put into jails made for adults. 15 year old boys are eating lunch with convicted rapists and murderers. We can't expect to progress as a nation unless we can address this injustice. Don't send our kids to jail. They won’t learn anything. Send them to rehabilitation, reeducation centers so they can be reintroduced as human beings. Not as the cold blooded, trigger happy killers the media has created based on false assumption and stereotyping.
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All of this seems good and all...but our current law system simply doesn't have the capacity for this kind of flexibility...nor will any system we are likely to adopt in the future. You see...law systems lack a fundamental quality that is required for what you're proposing...logic.
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"Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both."
-John Andrew Holmes
To the commenter above, our justice system actually allows for a lot of flexibility, given that sentences are left up to judges or juries, you know, groups of people who have feelings and common sense. Whenever I read about some kid being tried as an adult, all I can think is, "have these people ever seen Oz?" And some of them are so young, too.
I know they had this incident on the news that was talking about 8 teens beating up on one teen. It started when the one teen went on myspace and posted dirty comments about these 8 teens. Well they paid her back by inviting her over to one of their houses. When she wakes up from a nap, they start beating on her one by one . They beat her so badly that she passes out. You would think it would be over but when the girl woke up, they beat her again.7 of them are being tried as a adult. Do I think that is right ? No. To me the girl kind of got what she deserved but not to that extent. Many kids are tried as adults and many people question whether they should be tried as kids. Some feel if they are tried as kids , they will learn from their mistakes. Truth is the only way they will learn from their mistakes is when they want to improve themselves because no one else can do it.But I do see what you mean
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