Writing Homework Help

Respond with a 200-word answer and and a 75-word response to two other students’ responses.

As one of the EJI’s main focuses, the charging and sentencing of children as adults arises several times throughout the memoir. Stevenson comments that the fear and anger in the 1980s and early 1990s that fueled mass incarceration led to black and brown children being labeled as “superpredators” by criminologists. New laws led to harsher sentencing for juvenile offenders, but by 2000 the juvenile population had increased while juvenile crime rates decreased, thereby disproving the superpredator theory. Stevenson details how constitutional challenges he brings to the Supreme Court lead to the mitigation of sentences for children serving adult sentences.

What evidence did criminologists have in 1991 to support their ‘super-predator” theory? What part did ethnicity play in this theory?

Should a criminal’s background (childhood) make a difference in his or her sentencing?

reply to Kyle: In the early 1980s and 1990s, fear and anger played a huge part in spreading the ‘super-predator’ theory about young colored children. This turned out to be untrue, as the juvenile population had increased by the 2000s, but the juvenile crime rate had decreased. Stevenson brought many constitutional challenges to the Supreme Court that ultimately lead to the mitigation of sentences for children serving adult sentences. In 1991, criminologists supported their ‘super-predator’ theory using evidence about race, targeting black and brown children as the source of this expected “violence” to come. “Sometimes expressly focusing on black and brown children, theorists suggested that America would soon be overcome by ‘elementary school youngsters who pack guns instead of lunches’ and who ‘have absolutely no respect for human life.’ Panic over the impending crime wave expected from these ‘radically impulsive, brutally remorseless’ children led nearly every state to enact legislation that increased the exposure of children to adult prosecution. Many states lowered or eliminated the minimum age for trying children as adults, leaving children as young as eight vulnerable to adult prosecution and imprisonment” (Stevenson 159). It is made very clear by Stevenson that ethnicity played a major role in this theory, which made it even more untrue than it already was. A child does not yet know the difference between right and wrong, whereas adults, like the ones who sentenced many of these colored children, do know the difference. A criminal’s background (childhood) should at least have some role in their sentencing; it would help people understand how the child got into a certain position, what influenced them to make the choices they did, and reach their ultimate verdict of if the child was in the wrong or in the right.

reply to Marya: The criminologists have evidence that supports their “super-predator” theory. One piece of evidence is The “super-predator” theory suggests that some children who are guilty of committing crimes have no empathy and no respect for human life, they kill on impulse. “Super-predators” were usually children who were raised under unfortunate circumstances with a poor education and poverty. This links the theory to race, because people who were born into these poor circumstances were usually people of color. children who commit crimes have no respect for human life (Stevenson 159). Stevenson makes it very clear that ethnicity played an important role in this theory, they mainly applied the “super predator” theory to those of black and brown color as a way of discriminating against them. Black children had a higher risk of being accused of crimes by the police also to children with worse backgrounds, usually the poor with shitty family life. They should not have been sent to prison because not all children are like that, they never actually tried to do harm, they were just influenced or had bad background/mental illnesses also they were still so young and were not fully developed people. Their criminal background should make a difference in their sentencing because they are mentally ill who suffered trauma as a child. Their underdeveloped minds do not deserve to be punished for, as they have limited responsibility for their actions. They are able to change over time but are never given that chance and are forever judged by the actions they committed before being real people who have genuinely experienced anything in life.

Just mercy book:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C2iIkfzPONIj3LUQB3CdAtO7KvPBZTirpcERxu11sLw/edit