Should children who butcher other people just for the fun of it, pay the consequences as if they were adults? Today in America, there is a raging debate on whether kids should be tried as minors or adults. Every day more and more kids are committing major crimes. I believe these young people should be tried as adults and pay the consequences of their criminal behavior.
I think that kids who commit major crimes should go to an adult prison. It does not matter how old you are; if you do the crime, you do the time. If a kid commits the same crime as an adult, the kid should not get a lesser punishment. They should not get a second chance just because they are young. If you give them a second chance, you are just giving them another opportunity to commit rape, robbery, assault, murder, or other criminal acts. No one really thinks about this until it happens to them or a friend of theirs, but it is very important. If we start trying kids as adults now, we could prevent second chance felonies.

Some say that “minors do not understand the significance of their actions, that they don’t understand the enormity of what they have done or how it has hurt others” (Wilde 2). That is just an excuse so they do not get tried as an adult. A good example is the railroad incident. These two ten-year-old boys kidnapped, 2-year-old, Jamie Bulger, who they mutilated and murdered. After that the two boys laid his body on a railroad track trying to cause significant damage to the body, which would cover up the murder of Jamie. These kids were ten years old and they understood exactly what they were doing. Kids should not be given second chances just because they give lame excuses to justify their acts. How would you feel if you were “in Bulger’s mother’s shoes? Would you feel your son’s brutal murder was vindicated if the two boys who killed your son, purely for fun, were taken to juvenile detention, received rehabilitative aid and released...with nothing but a faint memory of what they had done?” (Wilde 2).

These kids need to be tried as adults and receive just punishment. If we do not start doing this now, kids committing criminal acts will start to spread like a wild fire. Kids will think they can get away with murder, rape, and more. We need to stop these kids in order to bring morals back into our society and prevent further felonies.