Charging Children for Adult Crimes: Nikki Lorenzini

When I hear the term “children” applied to fifteen and sixteen year olds, it makes me giggle a little bit. When I think of children, I think of when I was five or six and still playing with toys. But when you hit high school, you’re closer to being an adult then you are a child. By fifteen, you should know right from wrong. Your parents already instilled some type of core values into your life and expect you to act on it with some maturity. Your expected to reason the best you can with the limited life experience that you have. But to say that a fifteen and sixteen year old is still a child?

I am all for teenagers who commit adult crimes to go straight to prison with the hopes of some type of rehabilitation. If you are attempting to kill someone by torching them, I don’t think you could get any more violent. This whole situation seemed too calculated, and this violent behavior was already learned from somewhere. If at fifteen, they are attempting to kill someone, who is to say they won’t try to do it again when they turn eighteen? I would really like to see what these teenagers were like when they were five. Did they show signs of being this aggressive, but only being labeled as mischievous with the chance of growing out of it?

Also, I believe sending them to juvenile court would be letting them off the hook way too easy and would only convince me more that children and teens aren't being held responsible for any of their actions. When you’re still in high school, are you really thinking about your future? Sure, your parents and teachers expect you to think about college and life after high school, but you do you really realize what it will be like? I don’t think they realize what it is like outside of high school, or how hard life is without having some type of responsibility, to make mistakes and own up to them. Sending them to juvenile court will only help to enforce the mentality that they can attempt to kill a classmate and get off the hook for it. I do not trust a system that will let teenagers out in a few months or years when they have attempted to kill someone.

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