Death Penalty should not be imposed on Juveniles

Death Penalty should not be imposed on Juveniles

1. The United States Supreme Court has in the past made it clear that it prohibits the execution of criminals below the age of fifteen.
2. Still, nineteen states in the USA permit the execution of persons below the age of eighteen. The seriousness of this problem can be seen from data presented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on juvenile executions (Parrish, 2010).
3. 226 juveniles have been sentenced to death since 1973. Out of these juveniles, twenty-two were executed while 82 remain on death row. These numbers are overwhelming, especially considering the fact that juveniles are denied some civil liberties including voting and serving in juries and military.
4. The law has provisions that make it clear that juveniles are not adults and, hence, cannot function as adults. Children have a legal right to receive protection from the consequences of their actions.
5. Parents acknowledge that their children cannot function in the same reasoning as them. In the same manner, the legal systems have an obligation to treat juveniles in their natural states, and understand that some of their actions are motivated by peer pressure and a relatively immature brain (Streib, 2007).
6. Psychologists and scholars have in the past proven that children indeed become irritated faster than adults. Also, some of their actions are performed without sufficient pre-thought. Hence, it should be understood that some of their actions are not their faults, but rather the conditioning of the human functioning (Lawrence & Hesse 2010).
7. In the modern civilized world, death sentence of juveniles is arguably a cruel and unusual punishment that pulls the human civilization back to the medieval societies when death was the ultimate punishment. Even in these medieval societies had some decency in the way they treated their children. The modern legal frameworks embark on these cruel and inhuman rulings that are based on relatively small research.
8. For instance, the states that permit juvenile executions do not perform conclusive background checks on the juveniles to confirm the real motivators of their actions.
9. The Juvenile Justice Information Exchange notes that most death row inmates experience some social problems in their homes. Some of these problems affect the rational reasoning ability of juveniles, most of who are mentally disturbed as they resolve to violence (Finley, 2007).
10. Some of the social problems that affect these juvenile offenders include physical or sexual abuse, neglect and poverty, witnessing family violence, parental substance abuse, or the death or absence of a parent.
11.   Therefore, death penalty for juveniles is an area that requires extensive research. Children cannot go on being killed by the same laws that are meant to protect them without a response from the society. People should note that a child is the responsibility of the society.
12. Keeping silent on the issue could lead to increased illegal actions against our children. It is notable that while one may stay silent because it is not their child or sibling on death row, a child is a child and one can never tell what is in their minds. Still, staying close to your child does not guarantee that you can be the judge of all of their decisions (Joseph, 2005).
13. One moment a child could be mentally stable, and the next moment they could be upset by something as little as someone insulting their parents. Therefore, unless the law protects the children from the consequences of their actions there is little that we as the society can do to stop this cruelty that is directed to them.