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These biological and psychosocial developments explain what is obvious to parents, teachers, and any adult who reflects on his or her own teenage years: Young teens lack the maturity, independence, and future orientation that adults have acquired. It seemed odd to have to explain in a court of law something so fundamental about childhood, but the commitment to harsh punishments for children was so intense and reactionary that we had to articulate these basic facts.
This goes to the whole point of incarceration:
1. is it to avenge society,
2. is it to identify aberrant members and hold them apart until they are able to rejoin society or
is it to protect society by removing dangerous people and isolating them because they will always be a danger?
We argued that neuroscience and new information about brain chemistry help explain the impaired judgment that teens often display. When these basic deficits that burden all children are combined with the environments that some poor children experience—environments marked by abuse, violence, dysfunction, neglect, and the absence of loving caretakers—adolescence can leave kids vulnerable to the sort of extremely poor decision making that results in tragic violence.
Goes to the heart of what responsibility does th state have for the welfare of its children? Ie child welfare, foster care, etc. shouldn’t the failure of the state be a part of this discussion?
