States rethink 'adult time for adult crime' - the Youth Advocacy Division

Brain science offers insight to teen crime : Special Reports : Albuquerque Tribune
activity is taking place - and where it isn't - that makes the crucial difference.
The gray matter chatter in a teen brain is in full swing deep within the temporal lobe in an almond-shaped bulge
called the amygdala, the brain's emotional center.
In adults, the amygdala's emotional and often impulsive or erratic reactions such as anger, fear and recklessness
are tempered by the reasoning and social awareness of the brain's frontal lobe.
Cerebral construction is not complete until around ages 20 to 25, most scientists agree. The frontal lobe is one of
the last areas of the brain to develop.
In the adolescent brain, it's barely firing at all.
Without the frontal lobe on board, it becomes physiologically harder for a teen to completely understand the
future consequences of his or her emotional or impulsive actions, scientists contend.
"Thus, there is good reason to believe that adolescents, as compared with adults, are more susceptible to
influence, less future-oriented, less risk averse and less able to manage their impulses and behavior," Steinberg
said.
He and others advocate that such a discrepancy in brain function should be taken into consideration when
deciding to seek juvenile or adult sanctions.
Childhood abuse and neglect further hampers normal brain development, researchers say. A recent study by the
Juvenile Justice Center of the American Bar Association found that a majority of juveniles on death rows across
the country had been abused or neglected as children.
A U.S. Supreme Court decision last year now prohibits sentencing a juvenile to death, a decision that took into
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