Please read Chapter 2: Children are Different (pp. 9-18) from the report and watch and which shows the stages of brain development in teenagers and how it highlights or explains the decision-making abilities of teens. In recent juvenile sentencing decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court looked at studies of behavioral and brain development and posited three characteristics that distinguish adolescents from adults:
immature and impetuous decision making with little regard for consequences
vulnerability to external coercion (particularly by peers) and
unformed character
These characteristics make it difficult to judge an adolescents crime as irretrievably depraved. What are your thoughts? Are our children different, and do these differences require mitigation of their criminal culpability?
Links provided below for work
https://law.utexas.edu/faculty/publications/2009-From-Time-Out-to-Hard-Time-Young-Children-in-the-Adult-Criminal-Justice-System/download
