The article "Lifers as Teenagers, Now Seeking Second Chance" from the NY Times is about a 14 year old girl who planned to murder 4 people, and killed 2. Now, court is deciding whether she deserves a second chance or not. According to NY Times there are 73 Americans that are now serving time for a crime they commited at the age 13 or 14. Some people believe that they were young, and did not have a conscience. But others believe that they knew what they were doing, and they made the wrong decision, therefore they have to do the time. Do teen criminals deserve a second chance?
I believe that they do not deserve a second chance. It was their choice to do the bad things they did. They deserve the punishment. I think that by the age 13 or 14 you are old enough to understand what it means to commit such crimes. It's not like they are 5 years old and they accidently shot their victim. No, they planned to do it. I feel like anybody that put someone's life at risk, or hurt/killed them does not deserve a second chance at being free. Although some people might learn their lesson during their time, I still think that crimes are unforgivable. You cannot escape from something you caused, whether it was as a child or as an adult, you still caused damage to someone or something.
Some teens might commit a crime because of peer pressure, or the feeling of power, but really, where you are going to end up, it in jail. And once you are in there, there is no going back and erasing what you did. I feel like in our society, teens feel like they can do what ever they want and then they decide one day that they are going to go and do crimes. In the past couple of years, there have been about 2 fairly big shootings by teenagers. As much as this has to do with kids and thier decisions it also has to do with our security, but that is a whole nother topic.
I think that if you do the crime, you do the time, no matter what age it was commited. I do not believe that teen criminals should get a second chance because they ruined their lives for themselves.
This was a really powerful blog post with strong opinions but a lot of reasonable explanation and textual evidence. Your retell was very brief but I totally understood the article just from that and could see where your thoughts were coming from. Great post<3
ReplyDeleteThis is really thought provoking! I honestly just thing it depends on the person. If they demonstrate characteristics of being a killer, than they should have further examination. Each of these cases need to be read throughly before a final decision because there is always more than what meets the eye. Amazing job <3
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