Setting the Record Straight

By Rob Schofield

N.C. Policy Watch, Action for Children North Carolina and the N.C. Pediatric Society Foundation co-sponsored a special “Crucial Conversation” luncheon this week on the topic of juvenile justice. The focus of the event was the issue of how to treat young persons accused of crime: Should these kids – particularly 16 and 17 years olds – be treated in the juvenile justice system on the assumption that they can be saved from a life of crime or should they be transferred to the adult criminal justice system for the kind of punishment they could expect if they were 26 or 27?         

According to Dr. Robert Hahn, a nationally recognized epidemiologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and the featured speaker at the event, the answer is clear: serve first and save the adult system punishment for later. As detailed in an NC Policy Watch Weekly Briefing earlier this week, Hahn and a team of experts have conducted an exhaustive analysis of the available data concerning the effectiveness of the adult and juvenile system models. Their conclusion is that the transfer of juveniles to the adult system is demonstrably and statistically counter-productive – both for the kids themselves and society at large. The conclusion is based on the finding that kids sent to the adult system commit more crimes (an average of 34% more) after release than those receiving juvenile treatment.

Hahn’s arguments were echoed by three other panelists, including Durham-based community activist Akiba Byrd, state juvenile defender Eric Zogry, and Action for Children vice-president, Sorien Schmidt. Byrd, Zogry and Schmidt each offered compelling, common sense arguments as to why North Carolina ought to, at a minimum, repeal its 88 year old law that automatically sends anyone 16 or over to the adult system.

Another scientific explanation

While Hahn’s scientific analysis of the data on recidivism provided a compelling confirmation of the fact that it’s incredibly difficult (and probably counter-productive) to try to deter juvenile crime through the “big stick” of harsh punishment, perhaps the most interesting fact brought to light at the event came from a special report issued earlier in the day by Action for Children.

According to that study, “Putting the Juvenile Back into Juvenile Justice,” Hahn’s findings may well be attributable to some basic truths of human physiology and the development of the adolescent brain. Here are some excerpts.

“Recent work in the field of brain development provides further evidence that while adolescents may resemble adults, neurologically they are not adults. For most of the 20th century, researchers in neurobiology thought the brain had finished growing by puberty; however, research in the last 25 years has shown that this assumption is false. Using new technology, scientists have found that the brain undergoes significant neural development during adolescence, including dramatic changes to its structure and function, and that these changes impact the way adolescents process and react to information.”

The report goes on:

“Changes in the adolescent brain take 10 to 12 years and do not occur in all areas of the brain simultaneously. In general, the brain matures region by region with development progressing from the back of the brain to the front. The parts of the brain associated with basic functions, such as motor and sensory abilities, mature first, followed by those involved in spatial orientation, speech and language; the last to develop are areas involved in executive function, attention and motor coordination. These changes begin in late childhood, progress rapidly through the teenage years and reach adult dimensions in the early 20s.”

In other words, why do a lot of kids do dumb things? It’s the frontal lobe, stupid!

“The frontal lobe, which controls executive functions such as organizing, planning, strategizing and judgment, is the last region of the brain to develop…. During adolescence, the brain’s ability to ‘plan, adapt to the social environment, and to imagine possible future consequences of action or to appropriately gauge their emotional significance’ is still developing. As this region matures, the ability to perform complex thoughts, reasoning and behavioral control increases. These abilities allow greater inhibition of gut responses in favor of more rational decisions.”                        

This common sense finding, the report notes, was at the heart of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling in Roper v. Simmons that invalidated the execution of persons for crimes they committed as children. As Justice Anthony Kennedy put it at that time:

“From a moral standpoint it would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with the failings of an adult, for a greater possibility exists that a minor’s character deficiencies will be reformed. Indeed the relevance of youth as a mitigating factor derives from the fact that the signature qualities of youth are transient.”

Setting the record straight

For decades, North Carolina lawmakers have established juvenile justice policies based on the seemingly reasonable premise that “get tough” penalties would bring about two important results: 1) fewer young people lost to a life of crime as young offenders and potential offenders were deterred by the fear of punishment, and 2) a safer community.

The fatal flaw with this premise, it turns out, is that lawmakers were projecting adult logic and reasoning onto kids. As the Action for Children report (particularly the section on brain development) reminds us, most juveniles do not, and probably cannot, think in exactly the same way as adults. This is not to say that juvenile anti-social behavior can or should be tolerated, it’s only to point out that there are more effective ways to mold and redirect such behavior than mere application of the “big stick.”  

Given this basic reality, the Hahn-CDC findings regarding the counter-productivity of the adult system in treating juvenile crime make perfect sense. Not only does the “threat” of adult sanctions have less of an effect on youth with developing brains, the actual imposition of such punishment only makes matters worse by cementing anti-social behavior patterns and retarding further development.

The societal impacts of this miscalculation are obvious: more crime and more lost lives. Unfortunately, thus far, this basic realization has yet to arise in most policymakers. Like physicians who can’t understand why their patients aren’t responding to an inappropriate medication and who then double the dose, lawmakers remain stuck in the “get tough” and “scared straight” rhetorical rut, oblivious to the havoc that their well-intended, but toxic prescriptions are wreaking.

In the month ahead, let’s hope the Action for Children and CDC reports help to spur a reexamination of the “prescription” that state leaders are dosing out to our troubled kids.  

This entry was posted on Friday, December 7th, 2007 at 1:08 pm and is filed under Setting the Record Straight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.