What do you believe that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts should do with our juvenile murderers? Should we rehabilitate them or lock them away forever? What impact will your decision have on the murderer, families of the victims, and society in general?
Juvenile offenders are teens under the age of 18 who commit any crime that is illegal by the law. In the United States of America, Juvenile offenders break a state or national law and receive detention in return but less than the other offenders who are adults or older than 18 years of age. Some acts that are not considered a crime or the ones that do not lie under the category of crime are called delinquent acts. Juvenile offenders who break laws are treated according to delinquent acts. It means that the teens have some relaxation due to their age and innocence factors.
Juvenile murderers are the ones who committed the act of murder and killed someone. In the case of juvenile offenders, there are several ways adopted by the criminal justice system that is effective for their detention process and adopted as some alternatives to their incarceration process. The major reason behind it is that they are young enough to bear the punishment and due to the innocence factor they offered less punishment as compared to the other offenders. For juvenile offenders, many community-based programs and residential placement programs are adopted as alternatives to their incarceration process. In this way, these teens are able to determine and analyze their wrong acts and learn to serve the community rather than commit illegal crimes in the future. These programs are helpful for juvenile offenders and better than sending them to protected detention and confinement that has the probability that offenders will harm the juvenile ones rather than to teach them about the process of repentance (Alternatives to Detention and Confinement, 2014).
In the case of juvenile murderers, being sentenced to death is the most severe option and this could lead to disastrous circumstances nothing else. Teens are considered an asset for any nation and need appropriate protection by their society and by their country. In this case, when these teens commit the crime of murder, they should be rehabilitated rather than sentenced them to death. There are several reasons behind iq d this approach including the most important one that these are innocent and most of the time these teens are going through some mental trouble which led them to commit the crime of murder. Similarly, in the case of John Odgren and Valerie N. Hall who were teens and committed the crime of murder but during the state of their mental ailments (Favot, Mulvihill & Berg, 2012). The offenders who are suffering from mental ailments should never have been sentenced to death as these are not the ones who deliberately committed the crime. Mostly the teens who commit the crimes of murder are the ones who are suffering from mental ailments. They need or deserve rehabilitative measures rather than punishment in jail and waiting for their death. Juvenile murderers, who deliberately commits crime also needs rehabilitative measures because there are always such circumstances that lead them to commit crimes. Teens are innocent and under the age of maturity, so they are not able to analyze the reality behind their actions. They need rehabilitative measures so that they could learn about the severity of their actions, learn about the societal rules, learns about the act of repentance, and learn to start their lives with integrity again to serve their nation.
A law named, “Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974” (JJDPA) was created that is based on the fact that states will fund the treatment process of young juvenile offenders. It includes deinstitutionalization of status offenders, sight and sound, jail removal, and disproportionate minority confinement. All these treatment processes are created to treat juvenile offenders in a different way and to apply appropriate rehabilitative measures on them. There are also many aftercare programs that are created to train offenders positively. In this program, the offenders need to stay outside of their houses and act upon some community measures so that they could learn the lesson. This program and placements contain confinement, secure imprisonment, wasteland camps and groups, and uptown treatment (Juvenile Aftercare Programs, 2017). These all programs are important and could be applied to juvenile murderers so that they could be able to start their life again rather than start waiting for their death when granted the sentence of death or life forever. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts should consider all these measures, alternatives, and rehabilitative measures for juvenile murders. Locking them up forever is never the right way to treat these people and it will never have positive results as compared to the implications of rehabilitative measures. This decision will be effective for the murderers and society in general but not for the ones who are families of the victims. Surely they will want severe punishment factor, but they should be treated gently by the state and the criminal justice system and provided them training that will aware them of the results of rehabilitative measures. The most important factor is a society in general, so rehabilitative measures, treatment, and alternatives are the best option to choose for juvenile murderers.
References
Alternatives to Detention and Confinement. (2014). Retrieved 29 March 2018, from https://www.ojjdp.gov/mpg/litreviews/AlternativesToDetentionandConfinement.pdf
Favot, S., Mulvihill, M., & Berg, K. (2012). In Massachusetts, Teen Killers Get Inconsistent Sentences. Juvenile Justice Information Exchange. Retrieved 29 March 2018, from https://jjie.org/2012/02/17/73424/73424/
Juvenile Aftercare Programs. Retrieved 29 March 2018, from https://www.crimesolutions.gov/PracticeDetails.aspx?ID=54
The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974. Retrieved 29 March 2018, from https://www.ojjdp.gov/compliance/jjdpchronology.pdf
