Anything beyond the realm of legality is a crime, but not all criminals are held accountable equally. Additionally, they cannot all be treated the same because of individual variations in the reasons for their actions and their reactions to treatment. Juveniles are not and cannot be punished in the same way for a crime as an adult considered fully competent to make the decision to commit a crime. Even then, with adolescent “brain maturation” and rebellion playing a major role in their criminal thinking, this cannot be allowed to continue and perhaps worsen over time. Minors must be helped to answer for their actions, otherwise their thought crimes will be expressed freely without fear or understanding of their consequences. Say no to plagiarism. Get Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get Original EssayCriminal activity is characterized by the violation of existing laws for the safety and well-being of society as a whole . For maintaining order, it was imperative to identify disorder and laws were made based on deviation from optimal ordered societal conditions. But things are never so black and white, and so the gray area comes with the concept of intention. "Actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea", meaning "an act does not make a person guilty unless his mind is also guilty", certain mental abnormalities render the individual incompetent in a way that thwarts his ability to understand the consequences of his action. actions, therefore not criminally responsible. Based on Plato's attribution of "an element of free choice, which makes us, and not Heaven, responsible for the good and evil in our lives." which could be deleted due to an anomaly or incomplete development. A person is morally responsible if, knowingly and in the absence of external coercion, he deliberately chooses to commit a specific act. “Children can therefore act voluntarily, but as they do not have the capacity to premeditate their actions, they should not, like animals and madmen, be considered morally responsible. (The Origins of the Right and Wrong Test of Criminal Responsibility and Its Subsequent Development in the United States: A Historical Survey) Balfour Browne defined responsibility as "the knowledge that certain acts are authorized by law and that certain acts are contrary to law, and combined with this knowledge, the power to appreciate and be moved by ordinary motivations and to influence the actions of humanity. Sir James Stephen held that no act can be a crime if the person who committed it was incapable of knowing the nature and quality of his act, or if the act is wrong or could not control his own conduct due to an illness affecting his mind or a defect. mental power. This argument concerns young offenders who are by default legally incompetent, meaning they are deemed incapable of making informed decisions in the eyes of the law. A legal loophole like this only solidifies the criminal thinking errors of the individuals who commit the crimes. The reasons are not excuses, the goal is not only to punish the crime but also to prevent it, and for this we must take reality into consideration. For example, in the historic Nirbhaya Delhi gang rape case, Akshay Thakur, Pawan Gupta, Vinay Sharma and Mukesh Singh were sentenced to capital punishment (2013) for the rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman. One of the main accused was a minor, aged 17at the time the crime was committed and who was sent to a reformatory for three years, the maximum punishment provided by law at the time for those under the age of 18. guilty of raping the woman on a moving bus, sexually assaulting her with an iron bar and throwing her to the side of the road bleeding, which led to her death a few days later in a Singapore hospital. The minor was seen as a victim of his situation, but it was his own decisions that put him in a situation where he took an active part in a horrible crime, which is inexcusable. This is where the debate about the impact of incarcerating developing children comes into play, for whom the consequences could be serious. Some literature suggests that incarcerated people experience mental deterioration and apathy, experience personality changes, and become uncertain about their identity. Several researchers have found that incarcerated people can suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as other psychiatric disorders, such as panic attacks, depression, and paranoia; subsequently, these prisoners experience difficulty adapting and integrating socially after their release. Other researchers have found that the experience of incarceration promotes feelings of helplessness, greater dependence, and introversion and can impair decision-making ability. Added to this psychological suffering is the knowledge of violence, the fact of witnessing it or the experience of violence, all too common during periods of incarceration. In fact, the reconviction rate for people released from a previous sentence is 41%. For those who have already been sentenced to four prison terms, the reconviction rate is 57%. And those with six to 10 prior prison experiences are reconvicted at a rate of 65 percent, raising the question of whether imprisonment does more harm than good. Imprisonment is not the only response to criminals, there are five objectives to any sentence imposed by the criminal justice system. system, that is, retribution, rehabilitation, incapacitation, deterrence and restoration. Imprisonment is often intended to protect the public and punish the criminal while trying to reestablish them as a normal member of society. However, the impact of social isolation can make their integration more difficult and encourage the individual to return to crime. Reward and punishment are powerful stimuli that can cause people to change their behavior by unlearning the blurred line of legality, or even moral responsibility. Minors must be held morally responsible for their actions, because judgments of responsibility are judgments about the relationship between an agent and an action and this relationship is not affected by maturity. Instead, they need to be clearly aware of a choice so that they can make the right choice even when they are not fully developed. The reasons for juvenile delinquency are countless and playing the blame game is more than easy. Most cases can be traced to the offender being abused by his parents or influenced by the wrong type of company. A study conducted by Farrington 1986; Tremblay and Nagin 2005 represent the relationship between age and crime, called the age-crime curve. This is an asymmetrical bell-shaped curve, meaning that the possibility of offensive activities tends to peak in adolescence (ages 15-19) and decline from the early 20s. Loeber and Farrington proposed ten reasons to explain this sharp increase during adolescence, including brain maturation, individual differences in self-control,.