For years, the controversial subject of whether Juveniles being tried as adults in court is ethical has been heatedly debated but the answer should be obvious, giving teenagers punishments designed for fully matured adults is entirely without true benefit and should only be allowed in extreme cases after all factors have been considered. Teenagers are not psychologically developed enough to be held as responsible for their actions as adults. Sentencing juveniles to prison exposes them to a subculture that is based upon crime, a subculture in which rape, murder, etc., are all regular occurrences. Exposure to such a culture completely destroys the main purpose of allowing juveniles to be tried as adults, by heightening the crime rates of the juvenile age group instead of decreasing it.

Age restrictions on privileges like driving, drinking alcohol, getting tattoos, etc. are in place because those under the required age, usually 18-21 years, are not mature enough to handle making responsible decisions with those privileges. Children as young as eleven years old, however, are being allowed to be sentenced to life without chance of parole in prison. Somehow, children who are mentally and emotionally incapable of making responsible decisions according to the justice system, are just as responsible for committing crimes that are more often than not ‘crimes of passion’ or self-defense as adults are. “less culpability should attach to a crime committed by a juvenile than to a comparable crime committed by an adult, since inexperience, less education, and less intelligence make the teenager less able to evaluate the consequences of his or her conduct while at the same time he or she is much more apt to be motivated by mere emotions or peer pressure than is an adult.”-US Supreme Court Justice Stevens.It is one thing to be intellectually aware of the consequences, but an entirely different matter is truly understanding the seriousness of what is happening until after the punishment is being served.
Supporters of laws that allow for juveniles to be tried in adult courts argue that teens these days are fully aware of what they are doing when they rape or murder another human being, and therefore should follow the saying “an adult punishment, for an adult crime.” They argue that they are exposed to such things all the time thanks to the news, video games, even the internet but this opinion is a fallacy. Awareness of a crime and what it means spawned from seeing it or hearing about it through such impersonal medias as the news and video games is not a good enough awareness to compare to that of adults. More often than not, teens are shown that such actions are not as bad as adults say, thanks to things like the video game Grand Theft Auto where murder, drugs, and numerous other violent crimes are casual and go unpunished regularly. Teens are not given the chance to develop a true sense of how serious the consequences of their actions can be.

“Nationally, children in adult jails and prisons are 5 times more likely to be raped, twice as likely to be beaten by staff, and 50% more likely to be attacked with a weapon than youths sent to juvenile justice system. A Justice Department study showed that the suicide rate of children in adult jails is 7.7 times higher than that of youth in juvenile detention centers.” Too often for comfort, teens and children tried in an adult court are also sent to an adult prison. To put a child or teen in the adult justice system is as good as sentencing them to torture for however long the sentence lasts. It is cruel and inhumane to send children to a place that most adults are terrified of, "The [adult pre-trial] jail experience was bad, you watched people get beat up, jumped on … people taking stuff from you, stealing stuff from you," Burton, now 19, said in a telephone interview last week. "Then you get into the prison, and it's a lot different. Its men. It's grown men. I seen people dying."- Report Says Trying Juveniles As Adults Is Counterproductive; Group Emphasizes Rehabilitation Over Punishment. October 04, 2010 Tricia Bishop, ‘The Baltimore Sun’, Haymond Burton was sixteen years old when he was charged for attempted murder after he hit a man over the head, twice, with a bottle in what he claimed as self-defense. He spent five years in prison with hardened criminals, for defending himself. To subject a child who is still developing mentally and emotionally to such horrors is against the Eight Amendment which is supposed to safeguard citizens from ‘cruel and unusual punishments’.

“Under the current law, teens 14 and older who are accused of certain violent crimes must be charged as adults from the outset and sent to juvenile court only after a judge considers the case. Supporters of that tough-on-crime approach say it treats teens with the same degree of seriousness as their actions and serves as a deterrent for future delinquency.”- Studies have shown that this argument is untrue, as evidence brings to light that juveniles who serve time in adult prison are much more likely to become repeat offenders that those who go through the juvenile justice system. In the juvenile system, offenders are put in rehabilitation programs and similar programs that serve to help correct the behavior in an effective way that is much more successful in juveniles than adults. Adult prisons would not have as quality resources in this area, as it is harder to rehabilitate an adult than it is to do so with a teenager. Therefore, the juveniles in the adult prisons are more exposed to criminals who would all but encourage criminal behaviors than to people who want to help them be better people.

The only reasons a minor should ever be put on trial in an adult court rather than a juvenile court is if there is actual, legitimate, evidence that the child is a serial-rapist or murderer who cannot be rehabilitated or if the juvenile has a mental deficiency like schizophrenia which makes it extremely likely that the offender will repeat the same behaviors and be an danger to those around them. However, capital punishment should not be even considered unless the case is being re-tried after the minor’s eighteenth birthday when they become a legal adult.

There are plenty of words to describe the practice of putting juveniles through the adult justice system, but ethical is not one of them. There is no excuse to force a still developing teenager through the trauma of the adult prison subculture of hard, cold-hearted crime in hopes of discouraging minors from committing violent crimes. Especially since the practice is about as effective as communism, good in theory but, due to the psychological factors of the populace in question, ineffective in its execution.