As a young woman that lives in a low income community, I see or hear many crimes that are committed by juveniles. Many of those juveniles I grew up with or know because of the fact that my community is not very big or diverse in cultures. As the proposition 21 passed a few years ago, I wonder if it is for the better of the state or if it is hurting us all around. I believe that a juvenile is old enough to know right from wrong when it comes to committing a crime. It is sad to hear that a juvenile has been prosecuted as an adult for a crime they committed, but I still agree that they are responsible for there own actions and must face the consequences necessary. In this essay, I will show both sides of the argument on the proposition 21, which prosecutes juveniles as adults in the courts. .
As I read through the article titled "No on California Proposition 21" by the Los Angeles Area Office of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America, I recognized that they were arguing that proposition 21 demonized the youth instead of nurturing them, which is the author's thesis. What supports his thesis is that the author states that 20 years ago California emphasized more on education than anything else. Now, it is building more prisons than educational facilities with the highest rate of incarceration in the world. .
According to the author, prop 21 gives more power to the law enforcement agencies and the prosecutors, to increase the amount of young people in prison. The author assumes that if a juvenile is wealthy then he/she won't go to jail or get classified as a "gang member", but if he/she is a poor minority then he/she will have a higher risk of criminal activity which leads to prison or jail. The author values youth more so than anything else in a community, "The foundation must be the powerful and elemental idea that we save our communities by saving our youth", a quote by Luis Rodriguez, author of "Always Running", .
