Juvenile Justice

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deteriorate even more in the future.
The U.S. Census projects that the juvenile population, reported to be 27.1
million in 1994, will rise to 33.8 million by the year 2004 (67).
At the heart of this controversy: the juvenile justice system. For the
past several years the system has been under attack by every one from state
legislatures to parenteen groups. Our solution to the rising juvenile crime
problem- to get tougher. According to a recent USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll, 60
percent of Americans believe that a teenager convicted of murder should get the
death penalty (ollson48). In response to this “get tough” mood, more and more
states are passing legislation to try youths as adults for more types of crime
at younger ages. Colorado for example has a brand new type of tough love for
their juvenile threats to society, this new “love', so it is termed consists of
lowering the age so that juveniles as young as fourteen can be sentenced as
adults(Hetter 38). This recently instated ...

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told
him that killing his sister was “OK”, because he was too young to be put in jail.
Another investigation is currently under way(11).
In Austin, Texas, two young men Efrain Perez and Raul Villareal were
both seventeen in June of 1993. As part of Villareal's gang initiation, the
boys spent the evening in a open field drinking and fighting among themselves.
However shortly before midnight two girls one sixteen and the other fourteen
took a short cut through this same open field. The gang members raped and killed
the two girls. Perez, Villarreal, and the three nineteen-year-olds await death
by lethal injection. The sixth killer, only fifteen years old, is now serving a
forty year ...

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