Kendria Williams
Dr. Wolfgang Lepschy
ENC 1102
October 21, 2015
Adult Crime Doesn’t Mean Adult Time In “Adult Crime, Adult Time” published in the Washington Post on March 29, 1998, Linda J. Collier argues that there should be a less lenient juvenile system. She reasons that as of 1998, since 1965 the number of 12-14 year olds arrested for committing violent crimes has tripled and that the juvenile system was “developed with truants, vandals, and petty thieves in mind, but not appropriate for the violent juvenile offenders of today”(qtd. Collier). She proceeds to argue that detaining a rapist or murderer in a juvenile facility until the age of 18 or 21 isn’t at all enough of a severe punishment. Collier demands that children under the age …show more content…
Children have different ways of processing information and it’s not much of a mature process as society would wish it to be. They can’t always provide proper explanations, use better judgment, or manage effectively during complex situations. A child’s brain just has too much of a simple way of thinking than that of an adult’s well-developed and matured brain. It is to be assumed that an adult knows better than a child does because adults have higher levels of critical thinking skills and ability of reasoning. This is why adults are far more held accountable and punished more severely when they commit any crime at all. With that being said, the juvenile system obviously takes more into consideration than whether someone is under the age of 18 and has committed an adult crime. Without a doubt, if a child commits an adult crime, there has to be an issue of the …show more content…
Granted Collier may be correct in that some states have lowered the age at which a juvenile can be tried as an adult in court under certain circumstances. However this is can’t be a good thing because if children were to be punished as adults at all when they commit adult crimes, there would be no need for a juvenile system. There would only be one system that punishes children and adults to the same extent. If children who commit adult crimes can be sentenced to adult time, that would mean that adults who commit petty crimes can be sentenced as if they are