Juvenile Prison? Adult Prison? Which is better for teens that commit murder? Well this is a debatable topic, but if you think about it you can form your own opinion. There are reasons for both sides and there are big reasons that may make you change your mind about sending teens to Juvenile for a crime such as murder. My stand on this topic, murderers go to adult prison and don’t get out until they have had 20 years of good behavior.
If you commit a crime you should go to Juvenile or Adult prison depending on the crime. The severity of the crime should decide where you go. For example if you commit a murder I definitely think you should go to adult prison no matter what age you are. Everyone should know not to kill someone and that is a huge crime. Think about the family of the victim. How is that going to affect that family? They will be so sad and will want something to happen to the person who did it. In Jessica Wilde’s paper she explains how two little ten year olds murdered a two-year-old baby. Now ten year olds I know are not totally matured yet, but they do know that murdering is wrong and that they shouldn’t do it. They did it for fun she says and they just wanted to see it die. The two boys stabbed the baby and mutilated it and then put it on a train track to destroy the evidence of the dead baby. This murder was too extreme! If they could think to destroy the evidence so that they wouldn’t get in trouble then they know that murder is wrong. People who commit crimes that know rights and wrongs are too dangerous and shouldn’t be kept in public. They could repeat their offense and become even more dangerous. These people cannot be let out until they are totally changed and we can guess that they are different from when they went in. Twenty years seems like a long enough time to be changed and make them regret what they did. If people who go to prison for murder get out and repeat their offense then they have sick minds. If you steal I do not believe that that is a big enough crime to send you to adult prison. Yes you shouldn’t do it, but its not the same as taking a life away.

If I was arguing against someone else about this topic then I could probably guess some things they would say. In Mike Hendrick’s paper “Stop Trying 13-year-olds in Court as Adults” he says, “The fact is kids are not adults. Their brains are wired differently. They don’t think things out the way we do” (1). I say that that’s just an excuse. You should know not to kill someone no matter what your age is. Unless you are 5-years-old or younger that’s is just a dumb excuse. I don’t agree with murders being put into Juvenile prison because some kids just think of it as a joke and then when they get out in 2-5 years they will just go back to doing the things that they did before and not think anything of it. Rehab isn’t an option and, “A lack of human morals cannot be treated or cured in rehabilitation centers” (Wilde 1). That is a great argument against the opponent. People will probably say that the kids need to have a chance to be rehabilitated and get another chance at life, but honestly these rehab centers will not be able to fix a lack of human morals. They will probably say that if a teen is sent to adult prison for twenty years then their life is over and they won’t have a chance to do anything productive and live a good life. Well I’d have to say that that’s too bad and plus it was their decision to murder someone and maybe they should think about what they did. If you think about it backwards, you could say well the person they murdered didn’t get a chance to do something productive, better yet even live. I could also say that if the murderer really wanted to turn his or her life around and really felt bad about what they did then they could use this situation for good. They could be a public speaker and talk to young teens about murder and making bad decisions in life. So this sentence is not too long. They should be in prison long enough to regret it and be able to think about the decision they made.
Murder is too huge of a crime to only be sent to Juvenile prison. You should be sent straight to Adult prison for at least twenty years. Sometimes if the murderer kills more than person then this could be a life sentence, but just to keep it simple, twenty years is good. This is a huge topic to think about because things like this happen all the time and the consistency of where they go is not there yet. This is something that should be looked into by the government to fix. Consistency is necessary to try and keep things fair and equal in the United States. Murder is an adult crime and should be treated like it. If you commit murder then you go to adult prison.