Childhood Environment Analysis

Childhood environment plays a huge roll in what characteristic you’ll develop. Most children remember their childhood as a time of immense love and joy, but for the kids that come from low-income households it is a different story. “Buka, Stichick, Birdthistle, & Felton, found youths from low-income neighborhoods witnessed significantly more severe violence [viz., murders and stabbings] than youths from middle- and upper-income neighborhoods” (“Discrepancies in the Incidence of Violence”). These children are being forced to grow up in an unsafe environment which can lead them to make bad decisions. Therefore, a minor should not be charged as an adult. Deeper investigation must be conducted before we can allow the justice system to take …show more content…
Growing up in a low-income neighborhood, and being exposed to negative impacting experiences, can lead to our children to grow up to be just as bad as their environment. That’s why we must evaluate a child’s bringing up before we take further action in convicting them. These criminal children are nothing more than a victim of their environment.When children are convicted we seem to wash away their innocence and find all the evidence needed to condone them, but never do we stop and analyze the life of these children. We cannot convict a child without fully understanding where they are coming from. We know they are mentally unable to make fully thought out decisions. “We emphasized the incongruity of not allowing children to smoke, drink, vote, drive without restrictions… and a range of other behaviors because of their well-recognized lack of maturity and judgment while simultaneously treating some of the most at-risk, neglected, and impaired children exactly the same as full-grown adults in the criminal justice system (Stevenson pg …show more content…
At the age they have committed a crime they are extremely impressionable, therefore they can not be held fully responsible for their crime. Analyzing the child’s environment can provide us with essential clues as to why they felt the need to commit a crime. Everything is not black and white, there is a gray spot we must uncover to make sense of the situation. “It was clear that these shocking and senseless crimes couldn’t be evaluated honestly without understanding the lives these children had been forced to endure (Stevenson pg 267)”. Mandatory therapy should be set in place, and perhaps sometime in a mental health facility. We need to rehabilitate these children because children are the future of America. We simply can not turn our backs to our future.
This is why I encourage you, my neighbors to take a stand to child imprisonment, let us stop this never ending chain together. Children do not belong in prisons, they belong at home with their loving families. In order to save our children from a life of crime we ought to demand changes in our communities. A better community benefits all of us, even those who are not part of our community. Let’s help our children end up in college, not behind