Unfair Penalties When the world fails to cope with a person, the usual approach would be to give them time to serve in prison or sentence them to death. It is said that a country is judged by how it treats its criminals, and if we put to death not only our convicted adults but also children, then the United States is not giving itself a good name. Young people do not have the cognitive abilities to carry out heinous crimes, they make decisions based on emotions and not rational thought and therefore should not be tried as adults. If the brain region involved in planning activities is not yet fully developed in young people, then giving them an adult sentence is unfair. Jay Geidd, lead researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health, concluded that “the part of the brain that helps with organization, planning, and strategy has not yet been built” (Ortiz 3). Basically what he is trying to say is that a teenager's brain is not yet like an adult's in terms of complexity because there are still regions that need to be built before one can make a truly honest decision. Furthermore, with young brains, teenagers are not able to think about just one topic when coming to a decision because they are easily distracted and unable to think logically like an adult brain does. To demonstrate that a child cannot officially mature before the age of twenty, Dr. Gut wrote: “The evidence is now strong that the brain does not cease to mature until the early twenties… the age of twenty-one or twenty-two would be more close to the “biological age” of maturity” (Ortiz 4). A person is not yet considered fully mature until their early twenties, so an 18 year old will still need a minimum of 3 years for their body to become fully... middle of paper... and the house of brave would be guilty of execute his minors. Works Cited Bradley, Craig, “Putting Juvenile Murderers to Death Is Wrong.” Capital Punishment, ed. Current Controversies Series. Greenhaven Press, 2007. Craig M. Bradley, “The Right Juvenile Death Penalty Decision,” TRIAL, vol. 41, no. 6, June 2005, pp. 60-62. Days, Drew, “The death penalty should never be considered for juveniles.” Should minors be tried as adults? Christine Watkins, ed. To the series of numbers. GreenhavenPress, 2008.Drizin, Steven, “Juvenile Offenders Should Not Be Eligible for the Death Penalty.” Juvenile crime. Andrea C. Nakaya, ed. Opposing Points of View Series. Greenhaven Press 2005.Ortiz, Adam, “Lack of Brain Development Makes Young People Less Guilty Than Adults.” Should minors be tried as adults? Judy Layzell, ed. To the series of numbers. Greenhaven Press, 2005.