Juvenile Adolescents

The police enter the house. The door is ajar and shows clear signs of forced entry. Inside, a woman’s body is lying on the hardwood floor in a pool of blood. Bloody footsteps are leading away from the body and toward the rear of the house. Several weeks of investigation lead detectives to the perpetrator of the crime: a thirteen-year-old boy. The facts of the case alone would certainly coerce any person to hope that the killer is caught and punished accordingly. Why does it seem that people are more willing to properly punish an adult than an adolescent for the same crime? Why is it a moral imperative that adults be sentenced to life without parole, but not children? Adolescents should be eligible for the life without parole sentence …show more content…
The term adolescent refers to people between the ages of thirteen and nineteen (all of which end in “teen”); however, the age range that should be considered for this analysis is thirteen to seventeen. The reason is that people eighteen and older are eligible for the death penalty as decided by the Supreme Court case Roper v. Simmons. Adolescents in the juvenile justice system are often given lighter sentences than adults and are also put through rehabilitation in order to alter their decision-making process. The problem is that this system does not always work. When people, especially children, are faced with a harsh consequence, they truly feel the gravity of their actions and take a more cautious approach to making a similar choice in the future. When faced with a rather harmless consequence for the same types of decisions, the deterrence factor is not as prevalent and often produces a higher rate of recidivism. In simpler terms, it is believed that adult punishments will truly deter adolescents from committing such crimes (Barbour …show more content…
In 2006, Brian Draper and Torey Adamcik brutally murdered their friend Cassie Stoddart when they were sixteen years old. Did they commit murder in the first degree? Absolutely. They recorded their entire plan and their reactions before and after the murder using a camcorder. According to the video footage, they claimed that they had to kill someone and that person was destined to be Stoddart. They went to the house where Stoddart was babysitting on the night of September 22, 2006. Wearing masks and carrying knives, Draper and Adamcik attempted to scare Stoddart by cutting off the power to the house. Upon entering, Draper and Adamcik encountered Stoddart and stabbed her to death. The two teens fled the scene and were definitely shaken up by the experience, as shown in the video footage. After Stoddart’s body was discovered, the police quickly turned to her friends, Draper and Adamcik. Draper confessed and showed the police where the evidence was buried. The teens were brought to court, charged with murder in the first degree, and sentenced to life without parole. The two convicts were interviewed at the age of twenty-one, providing new perspectives on the situation. Draper reported that he was just an outcast who was inspired by the 1999 Columbine shooting. His accomplice, Adamcik, was an outcast inspired by the movie Scream. One major concern that