juvenile
I. In Chicago, an 11-year old gang member shoots a 14-year old girl to death. In turn, the young gang member is found dead a few days later with two bullets in the back of his head. His suspected killers are 14 and 16 years old. In Littleton, Colorado, two students opened fire on classmates and teachers with semiautomatic weapons and homemade bombs, killing 12 students and a teacher, before turning their weapons on themselves and taking their own lives. In Somerset, Pennsylvania, a 14-year-old is charged with hammering nails into the heels of a younger boy. In Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina, a 13-year-old boy is accused of beating a 22-year-old female neighbor with a mop handle and then raping her. These hellish snapshots re-emphasize one major idea in modern culture: juvenile justice reforms need to dig deeper. Such startling headlines are clear indications that tougher penalities for junvenile crime must be implemented.II. Statistics show that juvenile crime is on the rise A. According to FBI records, people under the age of 18 account for 1/3 of all arrests for burglary, larceny-theft and motor vehicle theft, 13% for aggravated assault,
1. Nearly forty percent have their cases dismissed before or during the trial stage. B. There should be a sanction similar to the "Three Strikes" law in place for adult offenders in some states. After an offender has accumulated 3 offenses, he must appear before a judge who then reviews the individual offenses and dispositions to determine what punishment the offender must face. 5. Nearly 40% of violent juvenile offenders who come into contact with the justice system have their cases dismissed. 4. Only 10% of violent juvenile offenders-those convicted of murder, rape, robbery, and assault-receive any sort of secure confinement. A. Current punishment is not serious enough to discourage juvenile violence. 5. The 25-year old principle of keeping children separate from adults is threatened by proposed legislation in the US Senate that will allow teen-agers arrested for crimes for which they could be tried as an adult to be housed in adult jails indefinitely. This makes more sense than sentencing a juvenile as an adult only to confine him in a juvenile facility, sending an underlying message that although the system recognizes them as an adul
Some common words found in the essay are:
Pitts Waxahachie, III Stiffer, According FBI, North Carolina, Littleton Colorado, , Somerset Pennsylvania, California Illinois, II Statistics, violent juvenile, juvenile offenders, aggravated assault, tried adult,
Approximate Word count = 782
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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