Life In Prison

Improved Essays
How would you feel if your child was sentenced to life in prison? On June 25, 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that juveniles who committed murder could not be sentenced to life in prison because it violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. A justice of the majority claims the immaturity, impetuosity, and failure to appreciate the risks and consequences. Including the background at home, usually you cannot extricate someone from their environment at home. There is no doubt in my mind that minors should be tried as an adult or sentenced to life in prison. To begin, legally kids are not eligible to be considered an adult. I fully agree with this statement. A fourteen or fifteen year old does not know what they are …show more content…
This leads to an enormous reason on why kids are committing crimes at a young age. Research shows that there is a massive loss of brain tissue that occurs within the teen years. When you’re a minor it is easy to make simple mistakes. In the article Startling Finds on Teenage Brains Paul Thompson expresses that, “These frontal lobes, which inhibit our violent passions, rash actions, and regulate our emotions, are vastly immature throughout the teenage years.” The Author is trying to explain that a brain is the only part of our body that processes what we do. In the young ages of our life we do not have the correct thought process down which lead to such misbehaviors. An adolescent brain is responsible for controlling thoughts, actions and emotions, they cannot be held to the same standards when they commit terrible wrongs. When you compare an adult with a developmental brain and a minor without one how would you even give them the same treatment, juveniles should not be punished when they are simply just not …show more content…
When you grow up in the projects committing crimes is all you know. Your own family and friend do it for a living. You see this behavior and you just adapt it because you do not know what else to do. You were born to be a criminal. In the article On Punishment and Teen Killers Jennifer Jenkins points out that, “We in America have to own this particular problem, with weapons so easily available to our youth, and the violence culture in which we raise them in.” In a lot of cases teens lose their close ones which lead to anger and killing. We need to get these kids into a safer environment. It is not normal for a kid to witness killings and law breaking crimes and think it is just normal

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