Kids Being Charged with Felonies

“Kids Being Charged with Felonies”

12/2/04

A felony is a crime in which the convicted may receive more than a year in prison for their actions. The paper that you are about to read is going to explore some of the issues about kids being charged with felonies. We will also examine some of the issues of how this is portrayed in our news media today. Furthermore, I will offer my opinion, on how kids being charged with felonies could be a positive step in the right direction.

It is real that in America today we have asked our kids to grow up at an alarming rate. There has been no other time in history that children are asked to be mature enough to handle adult situations with regularity. Many of the past generations just did what their parents told them to do. Mow the lawn, clean their bedroom, and maybe some household chores and so on. In today’s society we’re asking our youth to watch their younger siblings. We also ask them to use potentially dangerous technology at a mature level. Keep in mind that some adults can’t even use technology responsibly! Since we want them to grow up quickly we have to expect that they are going to make adult mistakes especially with the actual maturity level. Is it safe to say that some kids do something that wasn’t meant to be so harmful, and as it would turn out be so detrimental to their lives? When they do make a mistake should we give them adult punishments?

I start in Atlanta, Georgia where two girls baked a cake with glue in the batter and fed it to their fellow classmates. The two thirteen yr. old girls could be charged with up to twelve counts of assault. (CNN 11-19-04) It is situations like this were two girls could be in jail for a long time just because they were trying to pull off a prank.

In Santee, California Charles Andre Williams, a student that was made fun of on a frequent basis brings a gun to school and gets off thirty rounds. The result was a death of another student. Williams had told several people the weekend before including an adult that he was planning to kill someone at school, but no one took him seriously. (CNN 3-8-2001) Again we ask students to make mature decisions, but it isn’t what we had in mind. The number of stories goes on and on including the King brothers who killed their father with a baseball bat. Also we are starting to see felonies using technology. 17 year-old Clint W. Triou was charged with a felony account of computer trespass among other charges in the New York Criminal Justice System. He had reportedly hacked into some files at his high school and deleted password- protected folders. (CNN 6-11-03) All of these cases have something in common. Nearly all of them the accused (a child) put themselves into a position in which they had some conflicts with trying to live a mature personality. Not to mention in all of the news articles found the writer acted very surprised. Listing many personality traits of the juvenile offenders to be laid back, quiet, and a joy to be around in some cases. Like adults these young people are forced to put on different masks in different situations.

Am I making this out to be a much too complicated question? Are the children of today being pushed to grow up faster and faster? The truth is that this is a complicated situation and we are a complex society that revolves around social norms and mores. It is clear that are children are starting to feel those culture norms at a much earlier age than before, thus requiring them to grow up at an accelerated pace. In our world today we have young kids that are very pro-efficient with computers, cell phones, and video games. It is in these realms that they meet people all over the world and are influenced in many ways. Positive or negative that alone puts are children in a much higher phase of intellectual maturity over their predecessors. With this level of maturity comes a need for more intellectual interaction amongst young people that they’re around. This develops