Wilde, a writer, who supports the trying of kids as adults for their crimes asks, ”In lieu of 11-year-old Jordan Brown murdering his father’s pregnant girlfriend because he was “jealous” and thankfully being tried by Pennsylvania’s court system as an adult, one may ask, why don’t juveniles committing crimes so heinous get the punishment they deserve more often”(Wilde 1)? The kids that are committing serious crimes these days are bringing up the question of whether these children should be tried as adults in prison. Juveniles that have committed a second severe crime should be tried as adults in the court of law.

The kids who have serious problems and cannot control their dangerous actions should have the same punishments as adults. The kids should get one chance and then get help to solve the problem. But after the second crime, the kid has already had their chance to change. The kid who has committed two offenses of severe crime cannot be treated the same as an average child. The delinquent is too dangerous to be put back on the streets in a short amount of time. These juveniles also have the mental awareness to know what they are doing is wrong and they are not oblivious to the cruelty they commit.


As one prominent psychologist has pointed out, “I think I’m qualified to say that 14 is too young to be considered an adult - much less have your life declared irredeemable” (Hendricks 1). The opposing side in this argument would state that the kids are not mentally ready to go to jail and do not deserve such a punishment as a kid. These opponents also say that a kid who commits these crimes is not fully developed enough to understand what he or she is doing at the time of these acts. These people also think that the kids don’t deserve the punishments that adults receive while doing the exact same crimes.

The kids who commit these crimes deserve the same punishments that adults receive. The crimes are just too terrible and inhumane for the perpetrators to be just allowed to go to a “detention center” for a couple months and thrown back out on the streets to go to the same schools as your kids. These kids are way too dangerous to be let out and they do not learn from their actions without proper punishments.