The things the criminal justice system does to children | Teen Ink

The things the criminal justice system does to children

April 8, 2022
By HANNAHB003 BRONZE, Lawrence, Kansas
HANNAHB003 BRONZE, Lawrence, Kansas
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

Do you believe young kids being put in prisons for something they didn’t do is right? Manslaughter being charged as murder especially in youth is not good for there growing process because it ruins their childhood, and it really enables there way of living with hope. if they don’t purposefully do the crime of murder I firmly believe that they should not be so heavily sentenced. 

           According to one of the world's largest non-subscription legal information site HG.com, Some teens accidentally kill another person but face murder charges because of one issue or another presented in the courtroom. I believe that teens should not have to be put in prison because of accidents. 

According to hg.com if juveniles are convicted of murder the judge may proceed to put them in life in jail with no parol. We need to do something about this because this world is so corrupt that they are sending children to jail for something they didn’t do just to do it.

Kids who are locked up are more likely to drop out of school and become more deeply involved in the justice system Vera.org states.

In Just mercy Walter McMillan gets wrongly accused of murder of a young girl  and I feel like that relates so much to my topics about manslaughter being charged as murder in youth (Bryan Stevenson) Because both are people getting accused for things that they did not do. 

I have heard a story in just mercy about a young girl getting charged for murder because she did manslaughter (Bryan Stevenson). Although she did kill someone, it was unintentional and she shouldn’t have to be charged for murder. Because for a kid to learn they should not be held in prisons they should be under close watch or parole because after all they are still a child and if they didn’t do it intentionally they should not have to be kept in a jail.

People in the criminal justice system believe that youth should be in jail for killing even if it was on accident. Because even if it was on accident they killed a living human being and they deserve to be put in jail. I disagree strongly because if it was an accident they should still have a life to live instead of being cooped up in a prison for murder. Instead of charging youth for murder even though they did manslaughter and then have them serve the murder sentence in jail, we should find ways to keep them on parole or house arrest or even just shorter time in jail. We should not keep putting people in jail for things they did not do because it is easier for the criminal justice system. We need to find solutions to these problems in better ways.

Having youth in prison wrongly serving murder charges also connects to the overcrowded jails problem. So not only is it making a child suffer for something they did not commit but it also adds on to a problem we have been facing for more than 50 years. 

The Marshall project website states that Advocates contend that these juvenile prisons are archaic. As well as adult prisons youth detention centers also lack mental health services. And many people want to shut the juvenile detention centers down. Juvenile prisons are usually very isolated which makes it harder for them to keep in contact with people outside the prison. “A lot of kids have been locked up in these larger institutions because judges don't have other places to send them” Anne Nelson says. 

In conclusion I believe that juvenile detention centers should stay because they are a better alternative than having youth in adult prisons. And the lack of services is also an issue but we can fix that by getting mental health facilities to work hand in hand with prisons so that prisoners with mental health issues can get the help they need. 


The author's comments:

i am a thirteen year old in Kansas and i wrote this piece to publish because i had learned a lot about the criminal justice system through the book just mercy by Bryan Stevenson and articles from many websites


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