Journal 6 Assignment | Homework Help Websites

Discussed your own perceptions about how juvenile offenders should be treated. If you began this course believing all criminals deserve the same punishment no matter the age, or you felt the rhetoric about crime from political leaders oversimplified juvenile crime, have your ideas about juvenile justice changed or been reinforced?

Now, you conclude the course by reflecting on those perceptions and recognizing whether or not your perspective has been changed.

By Day 7 of Week 6

Write a 300-word journal response to the following prompt:

• Review the Week 1 Discussion.
• How has your determination about whether juveniles should be treated differently than adults by the criminal justice system changed or stayed the same?

Juvenile Delinquency

It is has been a great dilemma of whether or not juveniles should be treated in the same way or differently as adult offenders in the criminal justice. The dilemma comes in because juveniles might not be aware of the consequences of the crime they are engaging in but the sad reality is that the impact of the crime on the victim is the same whether committed by a juvenile or an adult offender. It different countries across the globe, juveniles have been treated differently as compared to adult offenders(Krisberg, 2018). As a matter of reality, juveniles have their special courts, jury, and investigation procedures not ignoring the fact that they have their correctional facilities. Despite the impact of the crime being the same on the victim, it is right to have juvenile being treated differently from adult offenders irrespective of the crime committed.

According to Agnew, &Brezina, (2017); there are different reasons that makes juveniles to commit crime and a majority of these reasons are beyond the juvenile’s control. Also, juveniles are in the process pf their brain development which means that some of the things they do, they do not understand the complications. Treating them in a harsh manner as adult offenders would be a form of injustice for them. The reason is that they would be paying for the crime in a harsh manner that would not help them become better members of the society but rather become hardened criminals(Krisberg, 2018). By giving them a much lighter punishment would be a way of correcting the juveniles so that they can understand the consequences of crime and develop the right attitude of living a crime free life. Moreover, some adult criminal punishments are tough and can easily lead to the death of juveniles or development of permanent mental and body destruction.

References

Agnew, R., &Brezina, T. (2017). Juvenile delinquency: Causes and control (6th ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Krisberg, B. A. (2018). Juvenile justice and delinquency. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.