Adolescent Brain Development - the Youth Advocacy Division

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• “Although states may hold youths accountable for the harms they cause, Roper explicitly limited the severity of the sentence a state could impose on them because of their diminished responsibility. Even after youths develop the nominal ability to distinguish right from wrong, their bad decisions lack the same degree of moral blameworthiness as those of adults and warrant less severe punishment.” (3) • “The court [in Roper] recognized that youths are more impulsive, seek exciting and dangerous experiences, and prefer immediate rewards to delayed gratification. They misperceive and miscalculate risks and discount the likelihood of bad consequences. They succumb to negative peer and adverse environmental influences. All of these normal characteristics increase their likelihood of causing devastating injuries to themselves and to others. Although they are just as capable as adults of causing great harm, their immature judgment and lack of self-control reduces their culpability and warrants less-severe punishment.” (6) • “Roper’s diminished responsibility rationale provides a broader foundation to formally recognize youthfulness as a categorical mitigating factor in sentencing. Because adolescents lack the judgment, appreciation of consequences, and self-control of adults, they deserve shorter sentences when they cause the same harms. Adolescents’ personalities are in transition, and it is unjust and irrational to continue harshly punishing a fifty- or sixty-year-old person for the crime that an irresponsible child committed several decades earlier.” (10) Hillary Massey, 8 th Amendment and Juvenile Life Without Parole after Roper, 47 B. C. L. REV. 1083 (2006). • Argues for elimination or limitation of JLWOP based on proportionality review and diminished culpability of juveniles. • “The psychosocial research shows strong differences between adolescents and adults that implicate assessments of culpability. Researchers have identified four psychosocial factors that affect the way adolescents make decisions, including whether to commit a crime or an antisocial act: peer influence, attitude toward risk, future orientation, and capacity for self-management. In one study, adolescents on average scored significantly lower than adults on these factors and displayed less sophistication in decision making. Although individual levels of these factors are more predictive of antisocial decision making than chronological age alone, researchers found that the period between ages sixteen and nineteen is an important transition point in psychosocial development.” (1090) Staci Gruber & Deborah Yurgelun-Todd, Neurobiology and the Law: A Role in Juvenile Justice? 3 OHIO ST. J. OF CRIM. L. 321 (2006). • Summarizes adolescent neurobiology research and argues that brain differences due to immature development, like brain differences due to disease, be taken into account in justice system. • “[N]eurobiological studies … indicate that the cerebral cortex undergoes a dynamic course of metabolic maturation that persists at least until the age of eighteen. … Younger, less cortically mature adolescents may be more at risk for engaging in impulsive behavior than their older peers for two reasons. First, their developing brains are more susceptible to the neurological effects of external influences such as peer pressure. Second, they may make poor decisions because they are cognitively less able to select behavioral strategies associated with self-regulation, judgment, and planning that would reduce the effects of environmental risk factors for engaging in such behaviors.” (330) • Steps for defense attorneys to take to understand a client’s state of mind and baseline levels of functioning are listed on p. 332.
Margo Gardner & Laurence Steinberg, Peer Influence on Risk Taking, Risk Preference, and Risky Decision-Making in Adolescence and Adulthood: An Experimental Study, 41 DEV. PSYCHOL. 625 (2005). • Study finding that exposure to peers during a risk taking task doubled the amount of risky behavior among mid-adolescents (with a mean age of 14), increased it by 50 percent among college undergraduates (with a mean age of 19), and had no impact at all among young adults. • “[T]he presence of peers makes adolescents and youth, but not adults, more likely to take risks and more likely to make risky decisions.” (634) Press Release, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Adolescent Brains Show Reduced Reward Anticipation, (Feb. 25, 2004). http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/feb2004/niaaa-25.htm (last visited May 19, 2010) • Discusses how adolescents’ brains respond differently to incentives (risk/reward). Cites MRI study conducted on 12-17 year old and 22-28 year old subjects. • “Adolescents show less activity than adults in brain regions that motivate behavior to obtain rewards, according to results from the first magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study to examine real-time adolescent response to incentives.” (1) Laurence Steinberg & Elizabeth Scott, Less Guilty By Reason of Adolescence: Developmental Immaturity, Diminished Responsibility, and the Juvenile Death Penalty, 58 AMER. PSYCHOL. 1009 (2003). • Explains from a medical standpoint how adolescent brain development affects culpability • “In general, adolescents use a risk-reward calculus that places relatively less weight on risk, in relation to reward, than that used by adults.” (1012) • “The vast majority of adolescents who engage in criminal or delinquent behavior desist from crime as they mature.” (note 13, at 1015) IV. Reports and Other Advocacy Resources CHILDREN’S LAW CTR. OF MASS., UNTIL THEY DIE A NATURAL DEATH: YOUTH SENTENCED TO LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE IN MASSACHUSETTS (2009). • Study examining the imposition of juvenile life without parole in Massachusetts. Includes discussion of MA law, adolescent brain and developmental research, statistics and vignettes about the youth sentenced to LWOP in MA, discussion of the experiences of youth in adult prisons, analysis of economic costs of the sentencing practice, and a summary of global sentencing practices with respect to juvenile life without parole. Wendy Paget Henderson, Life After Roper: Using Adolescent Brain Development in Court, 11 CHILD. RTS 1, 1 (2009). • Advocacy guide for using adolescent brain research in litigation prepared by A.B.A. Children’s Rights Litigation Committee. Issues addressed include competence, sentencing mitigation, duress and coercion, differences in assessing reasonableness and recklessness for juveniles, and mental responsibility. Connie de la Vega & Michelle Leighton, Sentencing Our Children to Die in Prison: Global Law and Practice, 42 U.S.F.L. REV. 983 (2008). • Examines international norms and practices regarding juvenile life without parole. • “The United States is the only violator of the international human rights standard prohibiting juvenile LWOP sentences. With thousands of juveniles serving LWOP sentences, and none serving such sentences in the rest of the world, the United States is the only country now violating this standard” (990)
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Adolescent Brain Development - the Youth Advocacy Division

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