Juvenile Sentencing Assignment. Law Essay Research Paper

Juvenile Sentencing
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Imagine you are a judge in juvenile court. What type of justice would you be; would you be lenient? Explain your rationale for the type of judge you would be.
I would be fairly lenient to the young offenders. First, children often offend because of their environment and their maturity levels to understand the gravity of their actions with their far-reaching effects is slightly very low. Most children offenders do the crimes because of poor parenting and environmental factors that if addressed, these young offenders would have made different choices. They are still a vulnerable population and need proper protection and handling by their seniors CITATION Sam10 \l 1033 (Saminsky, 2010). For each of their offenses can be traced to issues around the adults in the child’s life and thus their crimes are not entirely of their own making. In a different set of circumstances and assuming they were brought up in a better environment, it is unlikely that the very child can do the same crime.
Secondly, children deserve second chances and handing them overly punitive sentences cannot serve the main goal of rehabilitation. They need to be retrained and taught on the proper values of the society before they are subjected to punitive sentences designed to keep them away from the public. If children who are petty offenders and or the rationale for their crime was survival, giving them second chances can help mold a productive member of the society. Additionally, harsh sentences are not deterrent to other ‘could be’ young offenders CITATION Lot16 \l 1033 (Lotti, 2016). There is no comprehensive evidence to support that harsh sentences can deter other offenders and therefore the rationale of handing harsh sentences to deter other offenders is inapplicable.
Thirdly, the prison systems in our country are not a very safe place for young offenders CITATION Gar121 \l 1033 (Scott, 2012). They are either mistreated, assaulted, discriminated and or trained to be hardcore criminals. If the child serves his/her sentence, he/she will have a higher recidivism rate. It is ironic the rehabilitation program indeed can end up creating more criminals. It is also very expensive to keep the young offenders behind bars. It is costly to the state to keep them behind bars and instead it is better to rule fairly in a way they can be rehabilitated and allowed to reenter the society as productive members CITATION Pet151 \l 1033 (Dizikes, 2015). If am being overly harsh, I would sentence most of the children to long sentences in prison to which they will be consuming the tax payer’s money. It is cheaper and better to rehabilitate the young offenders and allow them to reenter the society such that the cost of running the state and federal penitentiaries borne by the public is lowered and the ‘could be’ criminals are ironed out early.
What sorts of crimes would you be harsher about?
Some crimes such as rape and sexual assault stemming from lack of control of ...