Feature Writinq Final

September 27, 2010
Juvenile Crimes are such hard-hitting problems where the world is put inside a world of troubles, and it makes no sense why we are the ones paying for it and letting most teens get away with the crime.
Mrs. Lisa, who’s been in Colorado Springs resident for a five to six years, is a caring lady, with no kids and a husband who is in the military, which means she is home alone most of the time.
“I’m scared to even step out on my porch”, she said because she doesn’t know what could happen.
Mrs. Lisa had been the victim of a tragic crime about a week ago right after her husband left the house. Her truck was broken into and she was terrified. Mrs. Lisa talk about nervousness of being a victim of a crime again, she’s shaking, stuttering, and pacing back and forth.
She has been a victim of a juvenile crime herself, a teen came to her car and attempted to steal her car in daytime, Mrs. Lisa said “I was scared and I don’t know what I could have done if my neighbor didn’t come out and stop him then called the cops.
Stats say in Colorado Springs during 2003 violent crimes rate was 1,730, larceny or theft was 13,338, and property crime rate was 18,517. Law states that breaking into a house or building when a person is inside has the potential for violence. Even if no one was harmed or no property stolen, it can be charged as first degree burglary, a Class 3 felony with a mandatory sentence of 10 to 32 years in prison. Mr. Foley says that he, “to avoid mandatory jail or prison by working with prosecutors to reduce the charges or suggest alternatives”.

Residents of the communities say, “Discovering that if the authority doesn’t treat our teen criminals and give them consequences that they deserve, and then they will attempt to keep doing the same crime over and over”. The research on juvenile crimes revealed that many states have passed a new law for teens that are the age 14-18. Teens are most of the cases in the juvenile court system involving children and youth between the ages of 10 and 18.
The upper age of eligibility for harsh crime punishment is determined by the juvenile law of each state. Although most states try juvenile crime cases in juvenile court when the offender is younger than 18, a few states have younger cutoffs, which means the court lets most young teens off with a simple warning or slight punishment.
Alternatively, in cases of status offense (such as curfew violations), abuse, or dependency, many states extend jurisdiction through the age of twenty. In some states, a sentence obtained from a juvenile court can’t extend beyond the individual's 18th birthday.
The first thing is juvenile crimes are hurting communities because they feel like they are in danger. Many crimes such as vandalism and shoplifting hurt the community the most, because Vandalism is the willful destruction or defacing of property, it’s expensive to repair. It makes our communities unattractive and unsafe. Shoplifting is an expensive problem that everybody pays the price for many prices keep going up as store owners try to recover some of their losses. “A big department store can spend millions a year on security,” statistics says. It may lose as much as $2,000 a day to shoplifters. “Shoplifters give teenagers a bad name”, store owners say.
Additionally, juvenile crimes are big deals, but it’s a primary war against shoplifting vs. violent crime vs. larceny, it makes you wonder is shoplifting and vandalism are the big case that we are dealing with in courts no in days. In some states, such as Virginia, the minimum threshold for a person to be charged for grand larceny is only $200. A grand larceny in Virginia is treated as a felony.