Politics Should minors be able to be tried as adults?

I know this law is supposed to keep criminals off of the street but I don't think it's fair. I think there is a law that says you are an adult when you are 18 and when you reach that age they can penalize you as such. They don't let you buy cigarettes when you're a 16 year old if you're a mature 16 year old. They don't let you drive a car when your 14 if your a mature 14 year old and in California where the drinking age is 21 they don't let you drink at 19 if you're a mature 19 year old. So I think the courts can just wait if you commit a crime at 16 that they think is worthy of an 18 year old . They can sentence you like a 16 year old, which is what you are. And when you finish your sentence, if you're over 18 and commit another crime, then they can try you as an adult.
 
I think only murders and rapist should be tried as adults. If you are committing those crimes then you have foregone any protections of not knowing the diffrence between right and wrong and or not knowing any better.

On a side note American justice and penal systems are horrible. There are too many people in jail for drugs and not enough people in drug treatment programs. Something like 80% of all crime is drug related or motivated, which could easily be fixed by treatment.
 
I think that there is such a thing as 'emotional age' which is totally different then chronological age and that is what needs to be looked at. If a 16 year old committed a crime and has the emotion capasity of an adult, maybe they should be tried as an adult. But then this begs the question what if someone is over 18 and has a emotional compasity of a younger child, should they be tried as a child? I don't quite agree with that either.
 
There are certain crimes where teenagers should be tried as adults and I believe it is done, usually satisfactorily.

When it comes to murder I think it should all be adult. There was recently a murder here where a 16 year old killed his brother, but hes being tried as a teenager, and I don't agree with that.

It depends on situations, the world isn't black and white, its full of shades of grey and those shades of grey need to be examined.
 
I think only murders and rapist should be tried as adults. If you are committing those crimes then you have foregone any protections of not knowing the diffrence between right and wrong and or not knowing any better.
But I think they are still not adults and the judges are just making things up to suit their fancy. How can they try you as an adult when your not an adult? Isn't that like trying you for murder when you didn't commit murder? Murder is not always such an atrocity. If your living in the ghettos of LA fighting for your life you'd be surprised at the situations you can get into, and that, just one example. but either way, as nice as it may be your not an adult until your an adult and the law shouldn't take that away from you. Know matter how indecent you may be. I think you have the right to be a minor until you're 18 and the law shouldn't start getting wishy washy on that now just because it suits there fancy. And rape, I would say make the penalty stiffer don't change the definition of what a minor is.



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On a side note American justice and penal systems are horrible. There are too many people in jail for drugs and not enough people in drug treatment programs. Something like 80% of all crime is drug related or motivated, which could easily be fixed by treatment.

This is so true but changing fast where drug treatment is becoming more readily available for offenders on their first 2 or 3 offenses I think. They get quite a few chance right off and ( this is in CA.) and then even for the hard core can still work into a program later. But I definitely wouldn't say "easily" fixed. It's hard work, and takes a lot of dedication and perseverance. But I do agree there are far to many people in jail for using or selling items that other Americans are all to willing to buy that our own government has failed to stop from coming into the country or allowed to be made here. Yet the responsibility and punishment falls on a select few.


Sycofancy: it makes me think of a David Bowie song but I can't think of the name. Did you make that up?
 
I disagree with juveniles being tried as adults. If they can't vote, drive, gamble, buy cigarettes, etc., then they shouldn't be tried as an adult because they AREN'T one. Doing something wrong doesn't make them older, and it seems rather hypocritical to me to try someone as an adult when they can't do the things (such as voting) that other adults can do, so they shouldn't be treated as one by the courts.
 
Once again the reason people are getting killed in LA, or in any other area with a high murder rate, is the drugs.

The fact of the matter is if you kill someone with intent , you are 100% responsible and you need to own up to those responsibilites regardless of your age. Where or why you killed them does not matter. Unless killing someone was the one and only way that you could escape a situation with your own life, it is my personal opinion you should spend the rest of your natural life in jail with no chance if ever getting out.

Drug treatment is getting better, but that is not the whole issue. Look at all the people in jail for marijuana offences, these people shouldn't be in jail with murders and rapists, learning to be murders and rapists when then come out, for a drug that is so harmless. What would be the easy solution to lowering crime would be to legalize marijuana which would reduce the number of people thrown in jail in the first place.

As for my name it is just a pun on the word sycophant or sycophancy. Many people think it a misspelling of psyco fancy or sicko fancy.
 
The fact of the matter is if you kill someone with intent , you are 100% responsible and you need to own up to those responsibilites regardless of your age. Where or why you killed them does not matter. Unless killing someone was the one and only way that you could escape a situation with your own life, it is my personal opinion you should spend the rest of your natural life in jail with no chance if ever getting out.
Sometimes it is the only way to escape with your life and sometimes it's the only way to seek justice in areas where cops have a hands off policy. There are many different worlds in America, unfortunately they all follow the same laws.

Drug treatment is getting better, but that is not the whole issue. Look at all the people in jail for marijuana offences, these people shouldn't be in jail with murders and rapists, learning to be murders and rapists when then come out, for a drug that is so harmless. What would be the easy solution to lowering crime would be to legalize marijuana which would reduce the number of people thrown in jail in the first place.

I don't think Marijuana people should be in jail at all. But that's a perfect example of law enforcement bending and twisting and making the law into what ever they want for their own purposes. My point is this. Here in California we voted to legalize Marijuana, passed it by law and everything, then they just send it back to court like it didn't count. The people have spoken. But oh yeah, we're gonna pretend that didn't happen. Why even vote if it's not gonna count. They do what they want anyway. Proven. The marijuana is still illegal even though it's been voted through. But really I didn't know that there were that many people in jail for marijuana. I thought coke and meth were the major offenders.
so Still I say: a child is a child and an adult is an adult. And a law should be a law. :smiley:
 
The thing about this though is the safety of society and justice.

Is it justice that because someone is 16 and murders someone else they should only serve 3 years?
And will that person be reformed after 3 years.
I would say they got away with murder.

So i agree with trying as an adult.
 
Is it justice that because someone is 16 and murders someone else they should only serve 3 years?
I know that the justice system keeps them atleast until they're 25. And they're sentencing kids as adults as young as 12 years old. What kind of person should have the right to do that to someone. I don't think it's fair. Are judges really trained to have that type of discernment over people. I don't think they're that good. From what I've seen they are far too human and far too average.
 
What kind of person has the right to kill someone, and then serve pretty much no time in jail for it?

Just because there are neighborhoods where vigilante justice is carried out does not make it right.

If a 12 year old is shooting up the neightborhood, sind him away for a long time and then maybe the other kids in his neighborhood will see what happened and think about not doing it themselves.
 
I say we take away their guns and give them hand to hand combate waepons like broad swords and axes. I thinkyou will find that todays youth, while full of blood lust, and also lazy and could not be bothered to put forth the effort to exact revenge if they couldn't do it from the comfort of their cars.
 
In August of last year, my family started to get terrorized by a group of people (we didn't know at the time who it was). They were leaving the most awful, obscene, disgusting notes about me on my door and vandalizing our house by throwing paint all over the driveway and our house. As the weeks went by, the terrorizing and vandalization got continually worse and worse. It got to the point where we had people in cars on either side of our street writing down on sheets of paper the liscence plates of every car that went by. To make an extremely long story short, the people who were doing this were caught, and it turned out they were also harassing 2 other families of people my age (16). The terrorizers turned out to be 5 juniors at a local highschool. All of them were good students, they went to church, and were also athletes. They were friends with the other girl they were terrorizing. I knew one of them through an accelerated school that he and I both go to for half the day. Today most of them are 17, but when they were caught back in November, they were all 16, and the lawyers thought that was too young to be moved to adult court. I think they should have been tried as adults, seeing as they all had a 4.0 GPA. They were smart kids and they knew what they were doing. They planned 3 months of hell, and not once did they stop themselves from continuing.
 
That's ridiculuous. You want to try a bunch of kids as adults for some childhood pranks? Boy you should run for President!!! :lol: :lol:
 
Yeah that can be explained away as being a dumb kid. It is horrible for the victims, but it should ruin the life of the guilty party.
Those are things that I think you deal with as a community. Getting the parents and kids involved and bringing everyone together in the restoration and cleanup if there is any and perhaps counseling for all parties. I think everybody would win.
 
Why should everyone be involved in the clean up? That's not exactly fair. Thos kids did it, they should be held totally responsible.

They managed to do it all by themselves,I think they can manage to clean it up all by themselves
 
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