Lorena Sandoval

Mr. Cook
Honors ELA
14 October 2014


Minors who commit crimes such as El Ponchis should receive psychiatric and
psychological treatments, instead of being tried as adults. I strongly agree with this
quote because a lot of minors either do not have control of their actions or their past
mentally challenges their decisions.
First of all, juveniles do not always have control over their actions. Often times,
they look up to older people and make the same decisions, not acknowledging the
consequences. One example is a 14-year-old boy named El Ponchis. He got charged
for beheading four people and disposing their bodies off a bridge. It seems harsh for a
teenage boy to have the mentality to commit these crimes. What people did not know
was that he did not mean to commit the gruesome acts. The boys father says [he] was
forced into service by older gang members as a pawn in the drug wars. The boy
murdered those people not only because he was obliged to, but because it was the
influence given to him from older people. He did not have control to decide whether or
not to murder the people, he was forced to. The best thing for the boy would be to go
into rehabilitation and correct his life before he grows up thinking that what he did was
right.
Furthermore, the minors can have a mental trauma caused by their past, leading
them to make the wrong decisions. Not everybody leads a happy life besides their
family and friends. Some people do not have the ability to share moments with their
family because they do not have one. This is an example of how minors can have a
mental trauma. Depending on their past, it can reflect what they do in the future. There
was a case where a 17-year-old boy was caught with his mentor causing harm and
death to innocent bystanders. By looking at a person, you cannot tell what they have
been through in their life. The boy had been abandoned by his father as a baby,
neglected by his mother, and spent time in a homeless shelter. All of these moments of
the past hurt the boy mentally and emotionally and so it led him to think that whatever
he did was acceptable. He does not need to be punished for not knowing what was
right, instead he needs to get psychological treatment to heal him from his past and
correct his life for the better.
Many people would argue that either one of these boys could have decided not
to commit the crimes, so they should still be tried as adults. The truth is, both boys were
brainwashed into making these decisions. They were not able to just step back and
realize what they were getting into, and even if they did, they were doing it against their
will. Why should these teenage boys be punished the same way as adults if they had no
other choice? This is just like when the author of the article said, A person who took
money from a bank, but could prove he did so only because someone was holding a
gun to his head, would not have a guilty mind. The boys did terrible things to other
humans but never was it proven that they had a guilty mind. All they need is a push in
the right direction before they grow up still thinking that their actions were a humane
thing to do.