Crime & Punishment

    In the article Crime & Punishment in the New York Times magazine Patricia Smith quoted that "The Supreme Court recently struck down mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles. The ruling signals a shift in how the law treats young offenders." One prisoner that committed a crime when he was 14 years old is Dominic Culpepper. At the age of 14 Dominic beat a neighbor to death with a baseball bat and is now serving at Florida State Prison. Another prisoner Rebecca Falcon took part of murder when she was 15. Rebecca got drunk and took back a huge amount of whiskey and got in a cab with her friend, who was 18 years old. Her friend had a gun then a few minutes later the cab driver was dead on the ground. Rebecca has life in prison just like Dominic. But now Supreme Court judges start to second guess about how younger teens who commit crimes should have a second chance and they should have life without parole. 

    Criminal Justice Legal Foundation Kent Scheidegger said that, "There are some truly horrible crimes committed by 17-year-olds, and those crimes deserve life without parole." To me this means that judges are letting teens that have committed a crime slide and not have to do a lifetime of parole. When judges let teens out of jail you never know what would be the next thing that they do. If teens continue to do things like that and get away with it teens would go crazy and just would be all over the place. But there are places that teens can go when they commit a crime. It's like jail but it's for younger ages Teens and children are what make up half of this world so this world would be destroyed if teens could continue to get out of jail.