Research Article Analysis: The Reproduction of Juvenile Justice

Research Article Analysis: The Reproduction of Juvenile Justice

Britt-ne Perry

CJA/334

February 22, 2016

Michael Walker

You have those parents who teach their child right and wrong since birth. But out of nowhere finding out that your child has committed a crime. Wait, not just any crime but more serious crimes like first degree murder, and assault. With all of this being the case each state has a juvenile court system that handles youth offenders. The main goal of the juvenile court is to rehabilitate the youth rather than punish them for the things that have done. In other cases the serious crime committed by a juvenile can processed as an adult. According to Dictionary (2003-2014 ), Many states look define a juvenile offender as a person who is 18 years old or below who commits an act that would be viewed as crime under the state’s law if the act was committed by an adult. Then you have some other states who view the juvenile age for offenders to 16 and those younger. In New York and North Carolina the age to be a juvenile offender is 15 and under.

In the case of Roper v. Simmons The U.S. Supreme Court has came up with the fact that they believe sentencing juveniles to death violates their constitutional amendment against cruel and of course unusual punishment (Singer, November 2011).. With that being said the Court also thinks that sentencing a person to life without parole for non-homicidal offenses is unconstitutional as well (Graham v. Florida, 2010). They came to this conclusion based off the lack of consensus as to the fairness of punishing juvenile offenders like their adults. If you take a look at the history to in which there is consensus as to the penalties to capital crimes this paper will examine the community of those juveniles offenders who were charged with different kinds of murders, then convicted in court to be sentenced to life in prison. Not all juvenile offenders are convicted in the beginning in court for their murder charges. When it comes to adults that’s a very different story. Only a few juvenile offenders were adjudicated delinquent in juvenile court or received youthful offender in court (Singer, November 2011).. This in the end gives the juvenile offender less severe sentence than a maximum sentence which is life in prison.

The article was written to estimate the risk of a person being sentenced to life in prison based on the state agency data for juvenile offenders who were initially charged with some type of murder. When making looking over the facts about the criminal responsibility of juveniles who were at first charged with murder, criminal justice professionals must invoke their legal discretion. Speaking on different stages of the criminal Justice process they might invoke the reason for avoiding criminal court because of substantive concerns about the juvenile offender. According to Wikipedia (2016), Substantive law is a Core law which determines rights and obligations, as opposed to procedural law. According to "Procedural Law Vs. Substantive Law" (2016 ), The courts put together rules of evidence and procedures which can be grouped into the term procedural law. You can look at it as fairness and transparency of process. The article talked about focal or extralegal reasons for directing criminal responsibly of juvenile’s offenders which are known as substantive based on reasons that are not grounded in the objective harm. This is made by real assessments taken of offense categories. The key is substantive law that many know takes into consideration circumstances that may be personal attributes of the juvenile offender. Even though criminal responsibly when it comes to those who are adults may seem clear to use when it comes to those adolescents it is not, especially those who are much younger.