n serious juvenile offenders as the media would have us believe. Within 24 hours of a violent crime, newspapers and magazines devote themselves to coverage of every fact, opinion, and theory. This news coverage makes the public take notice of these crimes of juveniles. In most crimes, the offender’s identities are hidden and their criminal records are expunged when they reach adulthood. What age should they face the same penalties as adults? Many people blame society for children’s violent behavior. Society has done something wrong to produce such troubled youth and now wants to condemn them as unalterable criminals. Studies have shown that children who suffer from neglect and abuse are often the ones who do commit these crimes. According to the National Center for Juvenile Justice, between 1985 and 1994 the number of cases that juvenile judges sent to adult courts increased by 71%, from 7,200 to 12,300 cases annually. New laws mean thousands of more youth will go the same direction. Most states require that the child be at least fourteen, but in Nebraska and Michigan there is no minimum age. In 36 states, the state legislatures have passed laws to exclude all seventeen year olds and in some cases all sixteen year olds from the juvenile courts. Three of the 36 states, Indiana, Vermont, and South Dakota are now sending ten year olds to be prosecuted as adults. Some states are even passing a law that “three strikes and you’re an adult” automatically sends juveniles with records to the adult criminal justice system. If an eleven year old can be charged as an adult and if twenty year olds are too young to buy beer, then who is an adult these days and who isn’t. Across America, prosecutors are pushing to try more juveniles as adults. Yet at the same time as, law-abiding adolescents are subject to restrictions that treat them as non-adults such as curfews, parental-consent re...
