Adolescents are not the best at exercising sound judgment, and part of growing up is learning by your mistakes. Young people are instructed to always be on their best behavior, to act their age, so on and so forth. While most youths are pretty good at following the rules, especially in public settings like middle…
Continue reading ›Adolescents, like adults, are disciplined for certain offenses with the hope that said offender will not do it again. It starts at a young age, a child does something wrong—a parent determines the appropriate punishment to mete out. Life is about standards and rules, if one falls short or breaks a rule, punishment follows suit.…
Continue reading ›Last week, representatives from different parts of the Los Angeles County juvenile justice system met to discuss the system’s problems and potential solutions. Lawyers, former juvenile offenders who had been through the system, advocates, and policy analysts in attendance acknowledged the status quo was not working. The representatives voted to commission a report on improving…
Continue reading ›As part of a larger effort to reduce the incarcerated populations in overcrowded prisons, Governor Jerry Brown proposed a bill last November that would make it more difficult to charge juveniles as adults in criminal cases. The initiative was initially blocked by a judge in Sacramento, but the California Supreme Court said they would hear…
Continue reading ›The United States Supreme Court continues to recognize the inherent differences between juvenile and adult criminal offenders, acknowledging that the former are less psychologically and socially developed—and thus less legally culpable—than the latter. At the end of last month, the Supreme Court issued a decision in the matter of Montgomery v. Louisiana, a case with…
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