That is to say, I believe that adolescents should be tried as “children” because of their lack of decision making skills and their increased tendency to enter into emotional extremes comparatively to adults. For example, male adolescents tend to be more irritable, aggressive, and impulsive. Female adolescents tend to enter more depressive moods. This variability in comparison to adults does diminish the agreeability of the adolescent-as-adult view. However, at the same time, the adolescent-as-child view must allow for some exceptions. To put this differently, it would be problematic, on a moral level, to consider all adolescents who commit crimes, such as first degree murder, should be prosecuted as youths and not as adults. For example, in Ottawa a teen was recently sentenced as an adult for crimes such as “human trafficking, making child pornography, sexual assault, child luring, utter threats, and unlawful confinement” (Ottawa teen pimp, 2014). That is to say, the reason she was tried as an adult was because her actions reflected deplorable crimes that needed careful thought and planning. The courts try to find a balance between when to treat an adolescent as an adult and when not
That is to say, I believe that adolescents should be tried as “children” because of their lack of decision making skills and their increased tendency to enter into emotional extremes comparatively to adults. For example, male adolescents tend to be more irritable, aggressive, and impulsive. Female adolescents tend to enter more depressive moods. This variability in comparison to adults does diminish the agreeability of the adolescent-as-adult view. However, at the same time, the adolescent-as-child view must allow for some exceptions. To put this differently, it would be problematic, on a moral level, to consider all adolescents who commit crimes, such as first degree murder, should be prosecuted as youths and not as adults. For example, in Ottawa a teen was recently sentenced as an adult for crimes such as “human trafficking, making child pornography, sexual assault, child luring, utter threats, and unlawful confinement” (Ottawa teen pimp, 2014). That is to say, the reason she was tried as an adult was because her actions reflected deplorable crimes that needed careful thought and planning. The courts try to find a balance between when to treat an adolescent as an adult and when not