Week 12 discussion post 2 UFPR

Juvenile justice system is more than a century old, there are still significant controversies involved in terms of public policy and specific penalties. This is especially the case with severe crimes that, in adult courts, would result in life without parole or the death penalty. In the juvenile system, public policy has at best been somewhat confused regarding the best way to penalize youthful persons who engage in severe criminal activities. For this reason, various APA studies have been conducted to determine juvenile culpability and the appropriate type of sentence to promote a fairer justice system.

According to the APA (2012), for example, an adolescent brain's anatomy is in a stage of development that is less mature than the fully developed adult brain. Certain key areas, for example, remain less responsive to concerns of justice and self-control than do adult brains. Juveniles, for example, are more susceptible to peer pressure than adults. Furthermore, in addition to a lack of life experience, the anatomy of their brains implicate a less solid basis of self-control than what is available to the adult brain.

For this reason, the APA has suggested policy changes to remove the death penalty and life without parole as possible sentences for severe criminal activities by adolescents. The basis for this is that, up to a certain age, the brain is not structured in such a way to allow a person to take full responsibility for criminal activities. Hence, the law should be structured accordingly. In the Supreme Court ruling in Miller v. Alabama, the APA's amicus brief was cited to justify the ruling that mandatory life without parole is unconstitutional, even in cases where homicide is involved.

Various academic studies before and since this ruling have been conducted to investigate the justification of such policies. One of these is Cauffman and Steinberg's (2012) study to examine findings regarding the development of the adolescent brain.

At the basis of the paper were three fundamental questions, relating to culpability and appropriate punishment for juveniles, the ability of juveniles to stand as competent defendants, and the effect of punitive sanctions on juvenile offenders. The article focuses on various topics, including the adolescent response to peer pressure, ability for self-control, response to punishment and reward, and so on.

The article suggests th incontrovertibility of the fact that psychological development continues well into young adulthood in such a way that all three the above questions need to be taken into account when determining and appropriate sentence for them. Indeed, while cognitive competence is fully developed by age 16, social and emotional capacities are still in development. This is not only the result of life experience, but also the way in which such experiences shape the anatomy and development of the brain. Indeed, the study has found that adolescents who are as old as 18 could be more impulsive and less oriented to the future than somebody in their mid- to late twenties.

It is therefore vital to create sanctions in response to criminal activity that do not pose a danger to the healthy future development of the young mind. Indeed, society will benefit to a far greater degree from juvenile offenders who have been rehabilitated by appropriate sanctions than from repeat offenders who have been "broken" by the system when they were young.