Juvenile Justice Debate – Rehabilitation vs. Punishment

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While it might seem okay to try some children as adults due to the gravity of their crimes, it does not provide a long-term solution to crime. Children who are tried as adults and are put in the same prison as adults may find themselves victimised and abused; instead of being rehabilitated, those children may end up becoming worse humans when it is time to leave the prison, as opposed to when they were put in the prison in the first place.

According to neurological research, the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for judgement and impulse control, is not fully developed until early adulthood. As such, treating a child as an adult when it comes to judging crime is not advisable, as a child who is being rehabilitated and placed in the juvenile system instead is more likely to change and successfully reintegrate into society, which will have a better effect on attempts to reduce crime than being tried as an adult.

People will argue that trying children as adults rather than as kids will reduce the crime rate since other kids will be scared of the repercussions of crime, seeing other children being tried as adults rather than as children, but in my belief, children are mostly immune to punishment as a simpler way and means of correction. A child who is being taught to understand the grievance of crime and the reasons why what they did is wrong, and how it could prevent them from doing it again, has a better chance of changing in comparison to those who are punished as adults and are confined in a locked-up space with other adults.

A child who is being locked in a prison may have their life stopped and ruined for the period of the sentence; it prevents the child from having a normal education having to interact with other children, which at the end may affect the child’s mental state. Treating a child who commits a crime like an adult will only cause the crime rate to rise rather than drop in the crime rate which will cancel the reason for the punishment in the first instance.

If the aim of the government is reduced crime rate, government should cling more to the juvenile programme for children rather than treating them as an adult, it is said that a lot of people make mistake when they are younger, the do this things most times because they do not understand its implications, to the extent to what they had done, a system that will try to correct this children rather than punish them for what they may not understand will defeat the essence of the punishment, a child is still too young to understand why he may be punished and as such may grow worst instead of better after such punishment, a child who is made to understand better what crime he had committed and why it is a crime in a juvenile correctional system rather than an adult prison is more likely to understand and change.

My name is @rishagamo and this is my response to the Hive Learners featured weekly prompt week 231 episode 03: "JUVENILE JUSTICE"

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