Second Chance Kids Analysis

Criminal Justice Frontline’s video, “Second Chance Kids,” takes its viewers through a controversial topic: life in prison for those who committed crimes as teens. Before the mid 2000s, teenagers who murdered someone get sentenced to life without parole. The arguments that teenagers grow up and change convinced courts to reconsider giving parole to those who were convicted for their crimes made as a teen. In one case, Anthony Rolon was 17 years old when he committed a crime. He was helping his father with selling drugs but a party next doors got really loud. He was afraid the noise would bring police to the area, so he went over and asked the neighbors to be quiet. They picked up baseball bats to threaten Rolon. He left but returned later on and stabbed someone three times. During the 1990s, there was a theory about superpredators (youth who repeatedly commit violent crimes) that broke out. Consequently, extreme sentences for teens were common and it set precedence for superpredator laws. Rolon was sentenced life in prison without parole. However, in the Supreme Court case Graham v Florida, the supreme …show more content…
I believe that those who committed a crime as a teen should be able to have parole. While I can understand the argument that teens who have murdered have stripped others of their life and should therefore be stripped of their own freedom and life, I lean more towards the science behind it all. Teens have highly underdeveloped brains. Their frontal lobes -in charge of decision making - are still growing. Thus, when faced with stressful situations and hormones rushing through the body, they may make atrocious decisions. Additionally, it’s important to consider the background of the teen in addition to their diminished maturity. Furthermore, research has shown that rates of committing crime after leaving prison are very low for adults. They would be even lower for teens because by the time they are