It is fitting that I am writing this first blog of my time as Senior Fellow in Law and Applied Neuroscience as we transition through the change of seasons. It is a privilege to have the time afforded by this joint Fellowship between Harvard Law School (Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics) and Massachusetts General Hospital (Center for Law, Brain, and Behavior) to focus upon the intersections of behavioral science, developmental neuroscience, and juvenile justice. The autumnal change of seasons is a fitting metaphor for the slow but profound changes occurring in juvenile justice which have been spurred in large measure by emerging neuroscience increasingly describing the neurobiology of adolescence. This neuroscience provides the biological complement to what developmental psychologists have well described and what parents have long known: Children are different.
This emerging neuroscience has become a quiet but increasingly pervasive force in helping us understand why most delinquent youth desist with maturation—even adolescents who are chronically delinquent and violent. It helps us understand why punitive “tough on teen crime” approaches born of fears in the 1990’s of the rise of violent teen “super-predators” actually compromises public safety over time—especially when youth are tried as adults and incarcerated with adults. And, it helps us understand why mass detention and incarceration of youth—many of them for non-violent offenses—not only harms those youth but tends to increase their risks of continued misconduct and of later deep penetration into the adult criminal justice system. Read More
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