Juveniles should be tried as juvenile criminals. I believe that juveniles can be tried as adults if they don’t understand their punishment and they have already visited the juvenile detention center more than once. If you were under the age of 13 and you have just murdered an innocent, unarmed citizen. The cops have just caught you and you are know in a private courtroom for being an under minor. Would you want to be charged as an adult or juvenile criminal?
The National Center for Juvenile Justice Profiles explains that, “juveniles are treated differently from adult criminals because ‘Youth behavior is malleable’ and can be reformed with treatment and successful rehabilitation” (Jessica Wilde). Juvenile criminals are made differently and still have more time to learn their rights from their wrongs where as adult criminals have had their time to learn to do the right thing and should immediately be sent to jail.

“11 year old Jordan Brown murdering his father’s pregnant girlfriend because he was ‘jealous’” (Wilde). This child’s mind was not thinking straight. Why does he have any reason to be jealous have his dad’s girlfriend. He should have talked about it with his dad. If he was tried an a juvenile criminal he would’ve been able to have gotten that second chance to talk through it with his father. In jail he might become more fierce being around so many other murders that it might want to make him strike back at the person who had put him in jail in the first place, or from their he could start taking more lives and at that rate he might become the best killer in the world and no one would be able to stop him just because he was in jail instead of juvenile detaining.
A two-year-old child was ****** and murdered by two older, 10 year old boys. Wilde says “the two boys then laid his body on a railroad track with the intention of causing substantial injury which would cover up what they had done to the child” (Wilde). Why would you try to injure a child by putting him on a railroad track? Obviously theses boys were not thinking straight if they only wanted the child to be injured when putting the child on the tracks. The fact that they got of with a juvenile trial was lucky and now they can get a second chance with the help of new identities and relocation. If these boys haven’t learned their lesson yet then they’re future will be behind bars.
Children have no say in the law because they are destined to choose the punishment that is to their advantage and in that this is why they should not be sent to jail because of their undeveloped minds. Most states just send kids to jail to avoid more juvenile criminal rates from increasing, but this is not right because they are putting no effort in trying to help the children of the future.