Age Doesnt Matter
AGE DOESN’T MATTER I feel that teenage criminals should not be considered not guilty by reason of adolescence. Just because someone is under the age of 18 doesn’t give them the right to break the law. In my opinion teens should know the difference between right and wrong, therefore should be charged for their crimes just as any other person would be. Although in our adolescent years our brains aren’t fully developed and we tend to make poor and irrational decisions; teens should know if their actions are right or wrong.
For example if a kid steals a shirt and get caught they should get into trouble. Since it’s a severe crime, I don’t think they should go to jail for it, but their must be some form of punishment. I feel that teen’s must be punished for the severity of the crime they committed, not by the age at which they commit it. For intense, murder. Murder is unacceptable no matter who you are or what age you are. No human has the right to take another humans life.
Whether you 17 or 47 murder is murder. Sure their may be different thought processes going on in the 17 and 47 year olds brains as to why they chose to murder, but that shouldn’t matter. The main thing is that they chose to act that way, they chose to kill, and they should receive the same punishment. The punishment itself should depend on the severity of the crime not on the age of the person committing it. Say a teen kills a woman at the mall and is in court being sentenced.
The jury needs to think about the crime itself and not feel sympathy for the boy just because he’s young and will have to spend the rest of his life in jail. If that old woman that got killed was someone they knew then they would have absolutely no second thought about sending the kid away for life. The problem is that the court system is too lenient on teen’s. A murderer should be sentenced as a murderer and a shoplifter a shoplifter, a teen should not get any kind of special treatment.
In conclusion I completely think that a teen should not be considered not guilty by reason of adolescence. Teen’s know the difference between right and wrong and should choose to stay out of trouble. If they choose to commit a crime, then they deserve the full punishment that comes along with it. They shouldn’t receive any type of special treatment whatsoever. They are responsible for their actions and need to live with the consequences just as any other person would.
