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Juvenile Justice - Adolescent Brain Development

  • Should the Science of Adolescent Brain Development Inform Legal Policy? (2015)

    Whether the revelation that the adolescent brain may be less mature than scientists had previously thought is ultimately a good thing, a bad thing, or a mixed blessing for young people remains to be seen. Some policymakers will use this evidence to argue in favor of restricting adolescents’ rights, and others will use it to advocate for policies that protect adolescents from harm. In either case, scientists should welcome the opportunity to inform policy discussions with the best available empirical evidence.

  • Juvenile Justice Policy and Practice: A Developmental Perspective

    Our aim in this essay is to examine the behavioral and neuroscience evidence that supports developmental immaturity of youthful offenders. We summarize findings from research over the past 20 years regarding brain, cognitive, and psychosocial development in adolescence. The main conclusions support the view that adolescence is a distinct period of development and that juvenile offenders deserve differential treatment and have much to gain from a less punitive orientation than at present. This recent developmental science is used to consider three issues in juvenile justice policy: the criminal culpability of adolescents, adolescents’ competence to stand trial, and the effects of...

  • Arrested Development: Adolescent Development & Juvenile Justice (2016)

    A 9th grader charged with assault for a spitball. A 12 year old sentenced to life in prison. These are the types of cases that Elizabeth Cauffman has focused her career on. She asks the fundamental question: are adolescents different from adults in ways that require different treatment under the law? In her talk, Elizabeth discusses how we can approach this question in a matter that is fair within our society.

  • When Does a Juvenile Become an Adult? Implications for Law and Policy (2016)

    In this Article, we summarize recent behavioral and neural findings on cognitive capacity in young adults (eighteen to twenty-one) and highlight several ways in which they bear on legal policies relating to the “age of adulthood (p. 769).

  • Developmental Reform in Juvenile Justice: Translating the Science of Adolescent Development to Sustainable Best Practice (2017)

    This publication explains why results from adolescent brain development studies in combination with other research that applies the foundation of this understanding to treatment and where interventions and practices with juvenile offenders achieve successful reductions of re-offending and improve positive youth development, it is apparent that the future of successful juvenile justice systems must be fundamentally driven by this research (p. 2).

  • Adolescent Brain Science and Juvenile Justice Policymaking (2017)

    The American legal system’s thinking about the criminal culpability of juveniles has been radically transformed over the past 12 years, largely as a result of the introduction of developmental science into the United States Supreme Court’s deliberations about the appropriate sentencing of adolescents who have been convicted of the most serious crimes. The author examines the role that developmental science, and, especially, developmental neuroscience, has played in this policy transformation (p. 410).