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In this Chapter I thought it was very interesting. I feel I wanted to point out Aggravating and Mitigating Circumstances for my discussion post. I feel a crime committed by an offender alone is not enough to determine the victim's sentence; the courts have to consider all the circumstances that can led to the offense and all the information about the offender needs to be put into account. Whenever a defendant is sentenced either guilty or not guilty by the judge, a variety of factors are considered.

Aggravating circumstances act as factors that support stiffer penalties to the defendant. These conditions pop up in all manner of ways including how the crime was committed and when the offenders are particularly cruel to the victim or rather the intent of the offence (Luginbuhl, 1988).

Judges are on the other side supposed to consider all the factors possible to reduce the defendant's sentence. These circumstances do not necessarily relate to the question of what is the defendant guilty of but they support the leniency to the accused. The judge has to listen to any circumstance that may lead to a little bit mercy of the offender.

Things like the role of the defendant matters a lot hence if he or she played a minor role in the offence for example if the accused was paid about $25 to knowingly drive the offenders in or out of the scene calls for a little bit leniencies to the offender (Zillmann,1976).

In the juvenile systems, the judge has to be very keen on knowing what led to the crime that was committed by the minor. Many children commit crimes for various reasons as compared to adults. The judge has to be keen on knowing what led to the child's offense and what circumstances call for either aggravation of the sentence or mitigation of the sentence. Any thoughts?

References

Luginbuhl, J., & Middendorf, K. (1988). Death penalty beliefs and jurors' responses to aggravating and mitigating circumstances in capital trials. Law and Human Behavior, 12(3), 263.

Zillmann, D., & Cantor, J. R. (1976). Effect of timing of information about mitigating circumstances on emotional responses to provocation and retaliatory behavior. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 12(1), 38-55.

Let's explore this. Do you feel that if a juvenile who is 10 commits an aggravated crime, that they should be given the same leniency as one who committed a mitigated crime? If I understood you right, you are saying that the judges need to show some kind of mercy to the juvenile and also taking into account their background? I understand showing leniency or mercy for a juvenile who maybe robbed a house, stole a car, was found with drug paraphernalia but not for heinous crime.

If a juvenile rapes, murders, attempted to murder someone, arm robbery and assault, I feel that these crimes need to handled without mercy or leniency. These are crimes that have a victim and there should be consequences that are severe instead of a slap on the wrist. I understand that juveniles, especially the younger age ones are not mentally mature as adults but even our children know that isn't right behavior. I guess my question is do you agree with showing mercy or leniency to crimes committed by juveniles that fall under mitigated?