“Last month in Sacramento, a fifteen-year-old Yuba City youth who reportedly claimed he was mimicking a TV program about little girls who rob a bank was given a 26-years-to-life prison term. Tried as an adult, Thomas A. Preciado was fourteen when he stabbed to death a minimart clerk.
In April, Court TV will air live daily coverage of the trial of Nathaniel Brazill, now fourteen, charged as an adult with first-degree murder. Brazill was thirteen and already in trouble for throwing water balloons when he returned to his Lake Worth, Fla., middle school and shot to death an English teacher, who would not let him say good-bye to two girls on the final day of classes.
This is not to say that the boys’ crimes were not heinous, or that they should go unpunished. No one’s talking about coddling here. But the zeal to corral wildly troubled, ever-younger kids and ram them through the adult system belies everything the juvenile justice system is all about: that kids are different. Their reasoning is not fully developed.
They are not adults.”
---Adapted from Marjie Lundstrom’s “Kids Are Kids—Until They Commit Crimes
The Sacramento Bee, March 1, 2001
Writing Directions:
Explain Lundstrom’s argument and discuss the way in which you agree or disagree with her analysis and conclusion. Support your position, providing reasons and examples from Lord of the Flies, other readings, and your own experiences or observations.
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