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Example research essay topic: Juveniles And The Death Penalty - 2,529 words

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Juveniles and the Death Penalty The most severe of all sentences is the death penalty. Death penalty has been banned in many countries throughout the world, however, in the United States, an earlier move to get rid of capital punishment has now been overturned, and more and more states are resorting to capital punishment for serious offenses such as murder. The abolishment of the death penalty is still one of the major political and social issues. Many people support this form of punishment, while others are against practicing death penalty. There are four major issues that cause the debate over the death penalty. The first one is deterrence, which primary purpose is to avoid in the future criminal conduct.

The deterrence theory suggests that a normal and rational person would try to avoid criminal behavior due to the reason that the benefits of such a behavior will be not as important as the opportunity to caught and sentenced to a death penalty. It is believed that fear of death prevents people from illegal conduct. Most criminals would think twice before committing murder if they knew that they are risking with their own lives. The second issue is retribution.

It is the need for society to express sufficient disapproval for murderers. For many death penalty is the single way to express their grief and sufficiently punish criminals. People who support capital punishment claim that the only proper response to the vilest murders should be the most sever punishment possible. It is also suggested that the use of the capital punishment in the way it is intended by law makes possible to reduce the number of brutal murders by eliminating some of the repeat offenders, which makes death penalty being used as a system of justice, not just a method of prevention. Modern supporters of death penalty no longer view this type of punishment as a deterrent, but just as a punishment for the crime, one source said, .".. in recent years the appeal of deterrence has been supplanted by a frank desire for what large majorities see as just vengeance (Bailey, 1994, 55).

The third debate is arbitrariness, which is determined by arising primarily from impulse rather than from judgment or reason. The fourth issue is the risk of mistake. In the past, there have been already cases when innocent people were executed for the crimes they never committed. This problem had increased the debate this form of punishment is suitable to use, because when the person is killed it will be not possible to change something, even if later it had been proved that this person was actually innocent. The thing about the death penalty is that it is a final and irreversible punishment. Here is the view of the person, who deals with this issue almost everyday: The system is not working.

Innocent people are being sentenced to death. If these men dodged the executioner, it was only because of luck and the dedication of the attorneys, reporters, family members, and volunteers who labored to win their release. They survived despite the criminal justice system, not because of it (Moses Harrison II, Illinois Supreme Court Justice, Chicago Tribune series, Nov. 14, 1999). However, there are different opinions concerning the death penalty for juveniles. It is considered that in many cases juveniles are not adults and therefore, their conduct cannot be punished in the same way that the conduct of an adult. Certainly, the point that whether a murder is a juvenile or and adult does not make a difference to people who lost a close person.

Besides, there is a number of factors, which may be a drive for a juvenile to commit crime without even thinking about possible consequences. In many cases, juveniles believe that they are not vulnerable and they will be hard to catch. This all is due to juvenile inadequate judgement of own abilities, which does not allow a person to take a right decision. If to get in depth into juvenile maltreatment, which can be one of the primary causes of juvenile delinquency, it will be possible to see what drives a juvenile towards committing violent crimes. If a child growth seeing violence in everyday life, it definitely will negatively reflect on the development of personality.

Certainly, not all of juveniles will commit violent crimes, but some of them are so full of rage and anger and probably they will not change their antisocial attitudes in the future. A person of 16 - 18 years old is mature enough to understand what is right and what is wrong. However, some of these young adults may change their attitude towards life in couple of years. Recently, I have heard one song and now I am able to recall some words out of it: how does it feel to loose your life over something that you did as a kid? From these words, it is possible to see that it is not the best way to change things in sentencing juveniles to capital punishment.

Many of them do not have yet structured view on life and their mistakes, are actually about to become last ones. However, studies suggest that about 40 percent of all adolescent criminals return to court It to look on the issue from another point, then even if a juvenile had committed violent crime and will go to prison for a long term, still there nothing good will happen in the life of that person. In the age of 16 - 18 if a juvenile would be sentenced to a life termite will actually will be over. There were some precedents when people after spending 40 years in prison came out almost in their 60 s, but will that person adjust to live in a society after spending such a long time in jail and what actually this person will be able to do?

A little different approach is brought up by 14 th Dalai Lam, spiritual leader of Tibet, who says: "I believe that as long as one is alive there is the possibility to change and redress whatever wrong one has done. " Current statistics shows that there are 83 juveniles on the death row and all of them are males. They constitute approximately two percent of all death row population. In 16 states and according to federal government the minimum age for capital punishment is 18. In the United Stated, there had been 18 cases in which men were executed for the crimes committed as juveniles. As of January 1, 2001, 73 persons were on the death row under the death sentences received for juvenile crimes.

At the time when they committed their violent crimes, all of them were age 16 or 17, now their ages wary from 18 to 42. Their time of being on the death row is from several months to 22 years. The largest death row for juveniles is in Texas. It holds 33 percent of the national total juvenile offenders. Two-thirds of juvenile offenders were minorities.

It is also known that 83 percent of their victims were white, and half were females. The paradigm case of the juvenile offender on death row is that of the 17 year-old African-American or Hispanic male whose victim is a white adult. The total number of persons under death sentences has increased by 208 % in the past fifteen years, reflecting a steady rise from 1, 209 in 1983 to about 3, 726 in 2000. In contrast, the number of juvenile offenders under death sentences has risen much more slowly. Thirty-three juvenile offenders were under death sentences at the close of 1983, compared to 73 juvenile offenders today (a 121 % increase), but this number has fluctuated back and forth between these two extremes during this decade.

This comparatively constant death row population for juvenile offenders results from the fact that the number of new death sentences each year is roughly equal to the combination of death sentence reversals plus executions for juvenile offenders. The question should juvenile offenders get the death penalty had been covered in many articles in magazines and newspapers. This subject is quite difficult because it includes three troublesome issues, such as crime, death penalty, and children. These are very emotional things and especially when mixed together. However, many people do not share common views on them. In the article from Chicago Tribune of February 14, 2002, the situation with the death penalty and juvenile crime is discussed.

It is written that according to research juvenile brains are still very much a work in progress, and that they tend to be weakest in the portions that govern self-control, judgment, and other matters where teens often conspicuously fail to excel. The evidence argues for a measure of leniency based on the obvious fact, which is recognized in every other aspect of the law, that minors are substantially different from their elders and must be treated differently (Column, Steve Chapman, Chicago Tribune, Feb. 14, 2002). However, there is no defending evidence in the practice of killing juveniles because they had physical capacity to commit murder. The juvenile death penalty represents a childishly obstinate refusal on the part of many citizens and states to acknowledge that young killers ought to be judged and punished by different standards from adults. In that respect, it's time we grew up (Column, Steve Chapman, Chicago Tribune, Feb. 14, 2002). I agree on the issues from the article.

From one hand, I support that if the juvenile had physical capacity to kill then he should be judged and punished in the same way as adult criminal. On the other hand, it is clear that in many cases adolescence do not recognize their actions. It is actually possible to compare with the law on drinking. Legal drinking age is 21, therefore, one can assume that in that age a person controls his actions. When then the drinking age would not be 16 or 18? Now it is possible to see that one of the laws, whether the drinking age or age, at which a juvenile can be sentenced to a death penalty, does not consider the situation.

People should always remember that the death penalty is used only in extreme cases, where other options cannot be applied. Besides, the reason rules of a person are created n the first place. Individuals conscience is simply internal self-policing system punishing this individual for not following the laws of the land. When that internal system fails, external rules and threats of punishment are needed. However, in some cases they do not help too. Some children simply have no fear for laws, even though they definitely know what is right and what is wrong.

These are lessons that are taught as we grow up. Some learn these lessons better than others. The development of such an attitude towards the law start in small tests and the child checks whether it is possible to get away with something wrong that is about to be done. This is actually a normal process in the child development and part of learning the life. Usually, the problem starts when such a test will not be punished, but later the punishment will not be a sufficient reason to persuade the child in doing same thing again in the future.

In the future, they start to operate on different level with more complex actions. This situation can be described: Who cares what I do? I can get away with it. And if they will catch me then so what? I know what the penalty is and it does not deter me at all. This pattern of thought becomes a road to major problems.

In some cases juveniles know exactly that they are doing a wrong thing and they even assume that they will be caught, but they know that they will not be punished, because they are not 18 yet, the worst that can happen is spending time in jail. That is what that many think. Unfortunately, it is children (especially at the teenage years) that are most prone to start this type of mentality. By the time most people become adults their major outlook on laws and rules has already been created and tend to stay that way barring any traumatic occurrence that forces them to reevaluate their views. The fear of death has always been a strong deterrent from doing highly immoral actions. This may be viewed as a bad example, however even organized criminals agree on this fact.

In crime families the occasional murder of someone, who did not follow the rules serves as a reminder to other members of that family to obey the rules under the risk of death. In all fairness, even crime families do not use the death penalty too often. The punishment for breaking the rules usually involved some form of physical pain or banishment in a way that would truly stick with the criminal for years to come and teach them to never double cross anyone again. For this reason having a real threat, which the death penalty is, for the crimes committed for juveniles is a beneficial thing.

It is also a deterrent. It punishment options will be taken away, no matter how harsh, the peoples hands will be tied. For this reason, a lot of people believe that the death penalty should be an option for juvenile criminals, because if it is used correctly and in cooperation with other types of punishments it will be effective against deterring crime, which has been proved. In my opinion, it is not a humanistic way to sentence people to the death row. I think if a person had committed a number of murders, still it is not fair to take away this persons life, for the reason that life was given to a person by God and should be taken away by God only.

Besides, it is much better not to execute 100 criminals and sentence them to prison for a life term than to execute single innocent person. I think that by age of 16 juveniles should understand at least what can happen with their lives (spending the rest of life in jail is not a good option) if there even was no death penalty. If one of many supporters of the death penalty would imagine being sentenced to death penalty, while being innocent, I think this would change this persons view on this issue. The increasing effectiveness of the system and the development of criminal science gives new and more complete evidences on whether a person is guilty or not, however, I think that we still are far from perfection. Nevertheless, I agree on the point that dead murderer will never commit a crime again, but I think it is more important to improve the system of justice in such a way that there would be no need for the death penalty in the future. Sources: Column, Steve Chapman, Chicago Tribune, Feb. 14, 2002 web Moses Harrison II, Illinois Supreme Court Justice, writing regarding a 1998 appeal of a Death Row inmate, as quoted in Chicago Tribune series, Nov. 14, 1999 web web


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Research essay sample on Juveniles And The Death Penalty

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