Should juvenile offenders be tried and punished as adults - Annotated Bibliography Example

of Lecturer 24 June Whether or not juvenile offenders should be tried and punished as adults The practice of trying and punishing juvenile offenders as adults is not consistent throughout all criminal justice systems as some systems still believe that juveniles should be tried in the juvenile courts no matter how grievous the crime might be. The perception in some justice systems is that trying children in adult courts would have an adverse effect on the children as they could likely have some sort of psychological problems.

This paper would try to establish whether or not juvenile offenders should be tried and punished as adults. People that would likely benefit from this paper are lawyers, prospective lawyers (law students) and the public at large. It should also be pertinent to note that people that are interested in the case of juvenile delinquency would also gain a lot from the details of this paper and the research work. This study would try to accomplish the fact that a child is considered an adult for the purposes of administering justice when the crime committed is not a case of juvenile delinquency, but a very serious criminal act and this underlines the importance of the study as it would be helpful for cases of juvenile delinquencies.

Books, internet sources and other relevant sources would be used for this work. Some of the questions that would form the basis of this paper are: Why are some children considered adults for the purpose of administering justice and are transferred to adult courts? What kind of crime would a child commit for the offence to be qualified as an adult crime? There are different schools of thought that oppose the conviction of children as adults. Some justice systems still follow the principle of rehabilitation for juveniles that commit crimes as they are of the opinion that children who are charged as adults would definitely be charged in adult courts and get adult sentence.

According to these justice systems, the implication of this is that the children would not have the opportunity to return to their normal lives as they would serve their sentences with hardened criminals. Transferring children to adult courts might not be a very good public policy as it could undermine efforts at changing the child’s criminal behavior as it could further harden the heart of the child. The information that is expected to be found out in the course of this research work would be useful in the judgment of juvenile delinquent cases.

It would help us to know that some children are actually considered as adults for the purpose of administering justice and are transferred to adult courts. It would be useful to the thesis in the sense that it lets the audience know that an increase in the intensity and severity of juvenile crimes make such cases to be transferred to the adult courts as the adult court would grant them the punishment they deserve, which ordinarily would not be given by the juvenile courts. Annotated Bibliography Elrod, Preston.

, & Ryder, Scott. Juvenile justice: a social, historical, and legal perspective Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2009. Print This book makes us know that the juvenile justice system is a complex body that is subject to changes. The book is reader-friendly as the authors made it to be as understandable as possible and this underlines its importance in this research work. It is also as current as possible as the issues discussed in the book are still relevant. For the context of this work, this book makes readers aware that children were originally believed to be incapable of committing crimes that are associated with adults alone.

With the intensity in the crimes that some juveniles commit, such as rape, murder and other felonious offenses, it has become pertinent to charge children that commit these serious offenses to be punished according to the severity of their crime instead of referring them to some rehabilitating juvenile courts. A child that stabbed a fellow child to death should not be charged with a child that is just a truant. It is justified to charge a truant in a juvenile court than charging a child that committed murder in the same juvenile court.

Children that commit murder are capable of doing anything, if they are not given the punishment they deserve; hence they must be regarded as adults and charged in adult courts. Sadler, Amy., & Barbour, Scott. Juvenile crime: opposing viewpoints. St. Paul, MN: Greenhaven Press, 1997. Print This book talks more about the opposing views on the juvenile crime and it is the extent at which it considers the different viewpoints of people on the issue of juvenile crime that makes it to stand out. This book would be very useful in the analysis of juvenile crime as the presentation of the different viewpoints on the subject matter would add to the multi-dimensional analysis of this research work.

For the context of this work, the book makes readers know that for a child to be considered an adult for the purposes of administering justice, it depends on the crime committed as grievous offences like murder, rape, armed robbery are usually not judged in juvenile courts, but as the juvenile that committed this crime is regarded as an adult and these cases are consequently referred to the adult courts. Administering justice to a child in an adult court does not necessarily mean that these children should not be rehabilitated as efforts must be put in place to change their bad criminal orientations.