Policy Panel

I see the ways in which the juveniles are subjugated simultaneously to unfair
treatment simply because of age or knowledge supremacy in the court room
and in school. Across the nation serious and very young juveniles are
increasingly being tried as adults in criminal court and incarcerated in adult
correctional facilities which I feel is too harsh at time and making the
increase for more important questions major for policy makers. In the United
States thousands of children have been sentenced to life imprisonment
without the possibility of parole. Some children as young 13 years old have
been tried as adults and sentenced to die in prison, mostly without
consideration of their age or circumstances of the offense.
In my opinion I think in this matter. To what extent do trials in criminal courts
and incarceration in adult prisons promote or inhibit community protection
and the accountability and rehabilitation of juvenile offenders. One big
problem I see is a lot of juveniles are unaware of the effects of transfer laws
of conviction and sentencing patterns along with the conviction rates in
juvenile versus criminal courts with the conditions of programming juvenile
facilities versus the conditions of adult correctional facilities.
With data that was posted and coming from the Department of Education,
Department of Justice, FBI, National School Safety Center and National Safe
Kids Campaign, Office of Juvenile Justice interviewed 37 juveniles who had
been transferred to criminal courts in Georgia, obtaining qualitative and
numerous questions based on structured interview questions and four key
ideas emerged. First was that juveniles were unaware of the laws. Second
were juveniles felt that if they were more aware of the laws they would have
been deterred or deterred other juveniles from committing the crime in the
first place. Third were juveniles generally felt that it was unfair to try and
sentence them as adults. And finally the juveniles consequences of
committing their crime was much worse than most of them had imagined,
and in my opinion harsh consequences of their incarceration in adult
facilities may have had a brutalizing effect on some of the juveniles mind in
the future.
In closing I feel that a lot of things are being over looked when dealing with
juveniles in the court system one major issue is that peer pressure needs to
be considered along with development of their brains needs to be considered
when convicting teens. The main reason because their decision-making skills

are still in their infancy. So if we continue to transfer juveniles into adult

court systems we are ending their opportunity to become a productive
citizen. It is fact that convicting juveniles as adults doesnt deter crime
neither does it make it a better solution. In fact its only undermines juveniles
and builds obstacles for the rest of their life this is not the correct way to
deal with juvenile delinquents but after I have given my opinion and
presented the research I found in Georgia and around the United States it up
to you to decide whether juveniles should be tried as adults.