Juvenile Life Without Parole (JLWOP) - Neal's ELA Class
TIME MAGAZINEThursday, May. 17, 2001Should the Law Treat Kids and Adults Differently?By Jessica ReavesWhen a child kills, does he instantly become an adult? Or does he maintain some trappings of childhood, despite the gravity of his actions?These are the questions plaguing the American legal system today, as the violent acts of juvenile offenders continue to make headlines.Wednesday, 14-year-old Nathaniel Brazill was found guilty of second-degree murder for killing his English teacher last year. The charge usually carries a prison term of up to 30 years, but Brazille's defense team is hopeful the sentencing judge will be more lenient in this case. They have a powerful ally: Jeb Bush. "There is a different standard for children," the governor said after Brazill was sentenced. "There should be some sensitivity that a 14-year-old is not a little adult."In March, another Florida jury sentenced14-year-old Lionel Tate, who killed a younger girl while practicing wrestling moves on her, to life in prison without parole. The concurrent Brazill and Tate trials served to heighten the public misconception that juvenile violent crime is on the rise; in fact, recent figures show a precipitous drop over the last five years.Are we seeing a drop because children are thinking more carefully about their crimes, knowing they could receive adult sentences? All but five states allow children of any age charged with murder to be tried as adults. The death penalty generally isn't an option — at least not for defendants under the age of 16; The U. S. Supreme Court has ruled capital punishment unconstitutional for anyone who hasn't celebrated their 16th birthday. Some states, however, will consider 16- and 17-year-olds for the death penalty.Or are there other factors? Defense attorneys might offer a different argument: Since the bulk of the drop-off in juvenile crime predates most states' embrace of harsher penalties for young offenders, it is disingenuous to assume any connection between the two.The fundamental question is, are children capable of understanding the consequences of their actions? Maybe not; recent studies suggest that the brain's prefrontal lobe, which some scientists speculate plays a crucial role in inhibiting inappropriate behavior, may not reach full development until age 20.It's unlikely that America's thirst for vengeance will be sated by scientific theory. We are, as a nation, very much in favor of treating child criminals as adults — a recent ABC news poll showed 55 percent of us believe the crime, not the perpetrator's age, should be the determining factor in sentencing.Below, a few of the arguments posited by both sides of the juvenile crime debate. At the end, there is an email address; we invite you to send us your comments. Let us know what you think.Should the U.S. justice system treat juvenile violent offenders as adults?YESThe end result?of a heinous crime remains the same, no matter who commits it. Our justice system depends upon holding perpetrators responsible for their actions.Harsh sentencing acts as a deterrent?to kids who are considering committing crimes. Trying children as adults has coincided with lower rates of juvenile crimes. Light sentences don't teach kids the lesson they need to learn: If you commit a terrible crime, you will spend a considerable part of your life in jail.Kids today are more sophisticated at a younger age; they?understand the implications?of violence and how to use violent weapons. It is absurd to argue that a modern child, who sees the effect of violence around him in the news every day, doesn't understand what killing really is. The fact that child killers know how to load and shoot a gun is an indicator that they understand exactly what they're doing.NOThe juvenile prison system can help kids turn their lives around;?rehabilitation?gives kids a second chance. Successful rehabilitation, many argue, is better for society in the long run than releasing someone who's spent their entire young adult life in general prison population. A young person released from juvenile prison is far less likely to commit a crime than someone coming out of an adult facility.Children?don't have the intellectual or moral capacity?to understand the consequences of their actions; similarly, they lack the same capacity to be trial defendants.Children?shouldn't be able to get deadly weapons?in the first place. Adults who provide kids with guns used in violent crimes should be held at least as accountable as the kids themselves.It's remarkably easy to find a seasoned defense lawyer who believes the current system is too?vulnerable to racism: Statistically, black juvenile offenders are far more likely to be transferred to adult courts (and serve adult time) than their white peers who've committed comparable crimes.Juvenile Justice: Too Young for Life in Prison?By?HUMA KHANJuly 12, 2010At the age of 16, Cameron Williams lives a life far removed from the world of other?teenagers.Williams, who celebrated his sixteenth birthday in jail, faces up to 110 years behind bars for second-degree attempted murder and use of a weapon to commit a?felony.In November, Williams shot at a police officer in?Omaha, Nebraska?as he was being chased after being pulled over in a car with two other men.He's also charged with robbery and assault in another county.Even though he is a minor, Williams was?charged in an adult court?because of his troublesome history and the "serious nature of the crime," the county attorney's office said."Anybody who pulls a gun and aims it at a police officer is a very serious threat and I would consider him a very dangerous individual," chief deputy Brenda Beadle told?ABC News.Williams is one of many young adults facing the prospect of life in prison as the debate over whether?juveniles?should be tried as adults rages on.The Justice Department estimates that about 10 percent of all?homicides?are committed by juveniles under the age of 18. Nearly every year, the FBI arrests more than 33,000 young adults under the age of 18 for offenses.The number of violent crimes committed by young people declined substantially from the 1990s to 2003, but then surged again that year, with the estimated number of juvenile murder offenders increasing 30 percent, according to the?Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.Juvenile Judge Elizabeth Crnkovich, one of five judges in Douglas County's juvenile courts -- a system Williams has been through in the past -- says there is a disturbing trend of increasing violence among young people."Uniformly in our communities, more and more young people are engaging in more and more dangerous and serious behavior. And I see as a result of that, more prosecutors and the citizens generally seem to be exerting more pressure to charge these youths as adults, as opposed to having them processed through the juvenile justice system," she said.Juvenile courts?focus on rehabilitation, unlike adult jails and prisons, where criminals are subject to incarceration and much harsher sentences. Today, virtually every juvenile offender who has a past criminal history, or is arrested for a violent crime like rape or murder, is tried in an adult court.Should Juvenile Offenders be Charged in Adult Courts?The trend began in the 1990s, when virtually every state expanded the rules under which?juvenile offenders?could be charged as adults."The juvenile justice system has been 'reinvented' in the image of the adult criminal justice system," Robert Schwartz, co-founder of the Juvenile Law Center, and Thomas Grisso, a clinical psychologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, wrote in an executive summary for their book, "Youth on Trial." "In the words of one 'get-tough' advocate, juvenile offenders 'are criminals who happen to be young, not children who happen to be criminal."In May, the?Supreme Court?handed down a decision that will soften sentences against some juveniles. The nation's highest court ruled that juvenile offenders who haven't been convicted of murder cannot be sentenced to life in prison without any chance of parole. The United States was the only country, prior to the ruling, that did not have a such a law.Opponents of trying juveniles in adult courts say more needs to be done for the nation's young criminals, and that the law needs to take into account their psychological development and maturity.The current system is "so at odds with what the research tells us about the kids," said Marsha Levick, deputy director and co-founder of the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center. "We're deciding at a point in his life when we simply don't have the ability to know who he'll be in 10 or 15 or 20 years.""It's equal to sentencing someone to die in prison," she said. "It's making these irrevocable decisions about kids under circumstances where the research doesn't support making those kinds of decisions."But prosecutors say they only consider this scenario if the juvenile is deemed too dangerous for society."We do consider all the options for a juvenile court if they don't have a record. Based on the nature of the offence, we automatically send them to juvenile," Beadle said. "There are several layers you go through before you try individuals as an adult."If the judges are lenient, Williams may still be able to walk free after serving half his sentence -- which could amount to a couple of decades -- but there are many more young offenders that may never experience life outside of prison.In the same county as Williams, two other teens, Juan Castaneda and Eric Ramirez, are charged for first-degree murder in a 2008 crime spree that killed multiple people.There are similar cases around the country of juvenile offenders that have committed violent crime. Just last week, a 12-year-old boy in?Missouri?was charged with two counts of first-degree murder for killing his mother and stepfather. InPennsylvania, another 12-year-old boy is charged with murdering his father's pregnant fiance.Meanwhile, juvenile courts are also seeing more cases of non-violent crime.In 2007, courts with juvenile jurisdiction handled an estimated 1.7 million delinquency cases, up 44 percent from 1985, according to the?Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.Williams' attorney says it is difficult to predict whether the young offender would commit another violent crime in the future, but that he should have gone through all other court-ordered programs available to teenagers before being charged as an adult."We can never predict the future. I'm guessing this is a tough lesson he's learned in life and it will hopefully keep him from the streets and gangs," said Williams' attorney, Glenn Shapiro. "He literally just got his life back, and then lost it."Does treating kids like adults make a difference?Two?assumptions are behind recent legislation passed in many U.S. states which make it easier to try juvenile offenders as adults.Young offenders will receive sentences in the adult criminal system which are harsher and more proportional to their crimes.The threat of this harsher punishment will result in lowered juvenile crime rates.Although there has not been extensive research into the deterrent effects of the stricter laws, the evidence that does exist indicates that deterrent effects are minimal or nonexistent, and that, in fact, trying juveniles in criminal court may actually result in higher rates of reoffending.?To date, there's no extensive research comparing the lengths of prison sentences received by juveniles convicted in criminal court with those who remained in the juvenile system. What research exists indicates that juveniles convicted in criminal court, particularly serious and violent offenders, are more likely to be incarcerated and receive longer sentences than juveniles retained in the juvenile system. Despite this, however, they often actually serve only a fraction of the sentences imposed, in many cases less time than they would have served in a juvenile facility.A 1996 Texas study found that juveniles sentenced in adult court did receive longer terms than they would have received in juvenile court. However, for all offenses except rape, the average prison time actually served was only about 27 percent of the sentence imposed, in some cases shorter than the possible sentence length in a juvenile facility. HYPERLINK "" \l "fn0" [1]In a study of the sentences received by youth offenders in New York and New Jersey, researcher Jeffrey Fagan came to similar conclusions. He found that adolescents transferred to criminal court were more likely to be convicted and sentenced to periods of incarceration than those adjudicated in the juvenile system. However, all juveniles sentenced to incarceration received nearly identical sentence length, regardless of whether they were tried in the criminal or the juvenile system. HYPERLINK "" \l "fn1" [2]To date, only two studies have examined whether stricter transfer laws result in lowered juvenile crime rates. Both found that there was no evidence to support that the laws had the intended effect.Criminologists Simon Singer and David McDowell evaluated the effects of New York's Juvenile Offender Law on the rate of serious juvenile crime. This landmark piece of legislation was passed in 1978, and lowered the age of criminal court jurisdiction to thirteen for murder, and to fourteen for rape, robbery, assault, and violent categories of burglary. Singer and McDowell analyzed juvenile arrest rates in New York for four years prior to the enactment of the law, and six years after. These rates were compared with those for control groups of thirteen and fourteen year olds in Philadelphia, and with slightly older offenders in New York. The researchers found that the threat of adult criminal sanctions had no effect on the levels of serious juvenile crime. HYPERLINK "" \l "fn2" [3]A later study by social scientists Eric Jensen and Linda Metsger reached a similar conclusion. They sought to evaluate the deterrent effect of the transfer statute passed in Idaho in 1981, which required that juveniles charged with certain serious crimes (murder, attempted murder, robbery, forcible rape, and mayhem) be tried as adults. They examined arrest rates for five years before and five years after the passage of the law, and found no evidence that it had any deterrent effect on the level of juvenile crime in Idaho. HYPERLINK "" \l "fn3" [4]?The researchers also compared the arrest rates for the target offenses with those in neighboring states Montana and Wyoming, which were demographically similar to Idaho, and had in place a discretionary waiver system similar to the system Idaho had before the new legislation. They found that juvenile arrests for the offenses targeted by the legislation actually increased in Idaho, while decreasing in the other two states. HYPERLINK "" \l "fn4" [5]Two recent large-scale studies indicate that juveniles who receive harsher penalties when tried as adults are not "scared straight." In fact, after their release, they tend to reoffend sooner and more often than those treated in the juvenile system.Columbia University researcher Jeffrey Fagan compared15- and 16-year olds charged with robbery and burglary in four similar communities in New York and New Jersey. Both states had similar statutes for first- and second-degree robbery and first-degree burglary. However, in New York, 15 and 16 year olds' cases originated in criminal court, while in New Jersey they were adjudicated in juvenile court. The sample consisted of 400 robbery offenders and 400 burglary offenders randomly selected. Fagan examined the recidivism rates of offenders from each state after their release. He found that while there were no significant differences in the effects of criminal versus juvenile court processing for burglary offenders, there were substantial differences in recidivism among robbery offenders . Seventy-six percent of robbers prosecuted in criminal court were rearrested, as compared with 67% of those processed in juvenile court. A significantly higher proportion of the criminal group were subsequently reincarcerated (56% vs. 41%). And those that did reoffend did so sooner after their release. HYPERLINK "" \l "fn5" [6]A 1996 Florida study authored by Northeastern University researcher Donna Bishop also found that juveniles transferred to the criminal system were not less likely to reoffend, but in fact often had higher rates of recidivism.?This research compared the recidivism rates of 2,738 juvenile offenders transferred to criminal court in Florida with a matched sample of nontransferred juveniles. Bishop and her colleagues found that although juveniles tried as adults were more likely to be incarcerated, and incarcerated for longer than those who remained in the juvenile system, they also had a higher recidivism rate. Within two years, they were more likely to reoffend, to reoffend earlier, to commit more subsequent offenses, and to commit more serious subsequent offenses than juveniles retained in the juvenile system. The authors concluded that:"The findings suggest that transfer made little difference in deterring youths from reoffending. Adult processing of youths in criminal court actually increases recidivism rather than [having] any incapacitative effects on crime control and community protection." HYPERLINK "" \l "fn6" [7]Following the same offenders six years after their initial study, the researchers again found higher recidivism rates for most juveniles transferred to criminal court. The exceptions were property felons, who were somewhat less likely to reoffend than those tried in juvenile court, although those who did reoffend did so sooner and more often that those tried in juvenile court. HYPERLINK "" \l "fn7" [8]In an overview of all the research on whether the stricter transfer laws are resulting in harsher sentences and lowered juvenile crime, researcher Donna Bishop cautions, "Unfortunately, assessments of the extent to which transfer achieves these dual aims are few and recent." HYPERLINK "" \l "fn8" [9]?The little evidence there is, however, does not indicate that the laws are having the desired effect. And there is some evidence, in fact, that they may be backfiring.Should 11-year-olds be charged with adult crimes?An 11-year-old boy in Tennessee is facing first-degree murder charges in the?death of an 8-year-old he shot?after he asked to see her puppy and she said no. The boy used his father's 12-gauge shotgun, taking it from an unlocked closet, according to?a storyin the Washington Post. The local prosecutor will decide whether to charge the boy as an adult.Nobody with a soul can seriously ignore the tragic nature of the death of any child. However, two wrongs do not make a right; prosecuting a very young child for murder and sending him to prison for life is tragic in and of itself. It essentially takes the life of another child and causes unimaginable heartache for others.For centuries American and English common law held that children under age 14 were not legally capable of forming criminal intent. For any crime to occur, there must be the convergence of what is known as the "actus reus" (the guilty act) and the "mens rea" (the guilty mind, also known as criminal intent).Without these two necessary pieces, a crime does not exist. State legislatures across America have largely changed the traditional common-law idea that children are unable to formulate criminal intent. There is no national standard in determining at what age a child can be treated as an adult in the criminal justice system. The result is that approximately 200,000 American children are charged and incarcerated every year -- as adults,?according to?the Open Society Foundations.Fourteen states have no minimum age at which children can be prosecuted as adults, according to the Equal Justice Initiative. In some cases children younger than 10 have been prosecuted as adults.I suggest that except for extraordinary circumstances, no child under the age of at least 17 should be sentenced to lengthy?incarceration in adult jails.?It is beyond debate that the human?brain?does not reach anything close to maturity until the early to mid 20s.Therefore it stands to reason that an adolescent or prepubescent child cannot understand the nature and the consequences of their actions. Why, therefore, in a rational society would anyone think it is appropriate to apply adult consequences to the choices made by children?The answer? Emotional knee-jerk reactions by politicians who pass laws without considering the bigger picture.For example consider the case of little Amy Yates, age 8 at the time she died, strangled in Georgia in 2004.At the time it was widely believed that her 12-year-old neighbor Jonathan Adams was guilty of the crime. According to Georgia law at the time the maximum penalty Adams could face was two years in confinement due to his age. He entered a plea without admitting guilt but it is now widely believed he was in fact?innocent.Nevertheless, the Georgia Legislature responded almost immediately and unanimously out of emotion and passed what is known as "Amy's Law" which would have provided for five years incarceration.Every state in the United States has some procedure in place to?prosecute?children as adults under certain circumstances.And there can be no doubt that sometimes it is appropriate to do so -- especially in cases where the offender is somewhat older and it can be shown that person is not capable of rehabilitation and where there is strong evidence of planning. Sometimes there may be evidence the person knew and understood the nature and consequences of their actions, which could justify an adult prosecutionBut the fact remains that children are children -- they are not adults and their brains do not work the same as an adult. Just ask any parent. Children cannot enlist in the military. Children -- indeed, adults under 21, cannot legally order a beer. Children cannot enter into contracts. Children cannot make legal decisions for themselves, but they CAN be held to adult standards if they are charged with crimes.And almost beyond belief, children can be?executed?for crimes they commit at very young ages.Setting aside for the moment that the punishment may sometimes fit the crime, it is worth noting that children in adult prisons do you not fare well at all. Approximately 10,000 children are held in adult jails and prisons in the United States.These are kids who are five times?more likely?to be raped or otherwise sexually assaulted than in juvenile facilities. The risk of suicide is likewise much higher for juveniles in adult jails. This raises the issue of whether prolonged incarceration of children violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.There is little if any evidence to suggest that treating juveniles as adults in the criminal justice system decreases crime or has any deterrent effect. In fact, what evidence does exist suggests the opposite. Studies show that incarcerating children more often than not results in higher rates of recidivism; essentially, it turns children into hardened criminals.But I don't need studies to tell me this because I have seen it for myself.I have worked in and around the criminal justice system for about 28 years. I was trained to believe that juvenile courts were courts of rehabilitation rather than punishment. I was trained to believe that children were salvageable whereas sometimes adults are not.I still believe that to be the case, but in my lifetime there has been a drastic shift from notions of rehabilitation to quests for revenge and vengeance regardless of the age of the accused.As a parent I know without question that children do not think about the world around them the way we adults do. They have little if any perspective and they often use poor judgment.It may not be possible to come up with a bright line rule defining the age at which a child can be tried as an adult. It should depend on a case-by-case analysis based on the child's age and other relevant factors. This decision should be left to judges with the help of psychiatrists and psychologists rather than ad-hoc legislative determinations. After all, that's why we have judges -- to make decisions based on the totality of the circumstances.Juvenile and Criminal JusticeJuvenile Life Without Parole (JLWOP)The United States is the only country in the world that currently sentences juveniles to life without the possibility of parole (JLWOP). Approximately 2,600 inmates nationwide serve life-without-parole sentences for crimes they committed as juveniles; over 450 of them are serving in Pennsylvania—the most of any U.S. jurisdiction. In June 2012, in a landmark ruling in Miller v. Alabama, the United States Supreme Court?held that "mandatory life without parole for those under the age of 18 at the time of their crimes violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on 'cruel and unusual punishments' and that a 'judge or jury must have the opportunity to consider mitigating circumstances before imposing the harshest possible penalty for juveniles.'"This ruling followed the Court's 2010 decision in Graham v. Florida, in which the U.S. Supreme Court determined that it is unconstitutional to impose such a harsh sentence on a juvenile convicted of a nonhomicide offense, largely because developmental and scientific research demonstrates how juveniles—including those who commit violent crimes—possess a greater capacity for rehabilitation, change, and growth than adults do, and are less blameworthy for their criminal conduct.Watch Deputy Director Marsha Levick argue Batts before the Pennsylvania Supreme CourtBuilding on the amicus briefs we filed in Graham and Miller, Juvenile Law Center works to end the practice of sentencing any juvenile, regardless of how severe their crime, to life without the possibility of parole. We file petitions and appeals directly challenging these sentences in Pennsylvania and write briefs and assist colleagues in relevant cases around the country. For example, we argued Commonwealth v. Batts, a Pennsylvania Supreme Court case in which a juvenile received a mandatory life without parole sentence for a murder he committed at age 14. We have submitted numerous briefs throughout the nation arguing that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Miller is retroactive and therefore applies to all juveniles serving unconstitutional mandatory life without parole sentences (see Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Cunningham).In addition to that work, we submit briefs on behalf of juveniles sentenced to life without parole for felony murder (see State of California v. Moffett), where their role in the actual murder may have been very limited but criminal law nevertheless permits their prosecution for homicide. We are involved in challenges to sentences that, because of their length, are the functional equivalent of life in prison. These interminably long sentences have been meted out to many youth nationwide who were also convicted of non-homicide offenses (see People of California v. Caballero). We also challenge sentencing schemes that do not require judges to treat age as a mitigating factor before imposing life without parole sentences on juveniles (see State of Ohio v. Long). Finally, we support legislative efforts to amend state statutes to prohibit the imposition of juvenile life-without-parole sentences.Crime, Culpability and the Adolescent BrainThis fall, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether capital crimes by teenagers under 18 should get the death sentence; the case for leniency is based in part on brain studies.When he was 17 years old, Christopher Simmons persuaded a younger friend to help him rob a woman, tie her up with electrical cable and duct tape, and throw her over a bridge. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to death by a Missouri court in 1994. In a whipsaw of legal proceedings, the Missouri Supreme Court set the sentence aside last year. Now 27, Simmons could again face execution: The state of Missouri has appealed to have the death penalty reinstated. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case in October, and its decision could well rest on neurobiology.At issue is whether 16- and 17-year-olds who commit capital offenses can be executed or whether this would be cruel and unusual punishment, banned by the Constitution's eighth amendment. In a joint brief filed on 19 July, eight medical and mental health organizations including the American Medical Association cite a sheaf of developmental biology and behavioral literature to support their argument that adolescent brains have not reached their full adult potential. "Capacities relevant to criminal responsibility are still developing when you're 16 or 17 years old," says psychologist Laurence Steinberg of the American Psychological Association, which joined the brief supporting Simmons. Adds physician David Fassler, spokesperson for the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the argument "does not excuse violent criminal behavior, but it's an important factor for courts to consider" when wielding a punishment "as extreme and irreversible as death."The Supreme Court has addressed some of these issues before. In 1988, it held that it was unconstitutional to execute convicts under 16, but it ruled in 1989 that states were within their rights to put 16- and 17-year-old criminals to death. Thirteen years later, it decided that mentally retarded people shouldn't be executed because they have a reduced capacity for "reasoning, judgment, and control of their impulses," even though they generally know right from wrong (see sidebar on p. 599). That is the standard Simmons's lawyers now want the court to extend to everyone under 18.Cruel and unusual?Simmons's lawyers argue that adolescents are not as morally culpable as adults and therefore should not be subject to the death penalty. They claim that this view reflects worldwide "changing standards of decency," a trend that has been recognized in many U.S. courts. Today, 31 states and the federal government have banned the juvenile death penalty. The latest to do so, Wyoming and South Dakota, considered brain development research in their decisions. Putting a 17-year-old to death for capital crimes is cruel and unusual punishment, according to this reasoning. "What was cruel and unusual when the Constitution was written is different from today. We don't put people in stockades now," says Stephen Harper, a lawyer with the Juvenile Justice Center of the American Bar Association (ABA), which also signed an amicus curiae brief. "These standards mark the progress of a civilized society."The defense is focusing on the "culpability of juveniles and whether their brains are as capable of impulse control, decision-making, and reasoning as adult brains are," says law professor Steven Drizin of Northwestern University in Chicago. And some brain researchers answer with a resounding "no." The brain's frontal lobe, which exercises restraint over impulsive behavior, "doesn't begin to mature until 17 years of age," says neuroscientist Ruben Gur of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. "The very part of the brain that is judged by the legal system process comes on board late."But other researchers hesitate to apply scientists' opinions to settle moral and legal questions. Although brain research should probably take a part in policy debate, it's damaging to use science to support essentially moral stances, says neuroscientist Paul Thompson of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).Shades of grayStructurally, the brain is still growing and maturing during adolescence, beginning its final push around 16 or 17, many brain-imaging researchers agree. Some say that growth maxes out at age 20. Others, such as Jay Giedd of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, Maryland, consider 25 the age at which brain maturation peaks. Various types of brain scans and anatomic dissections show that as teens age, disordered-looking neuron cell bodies known as gray matter recede, and neuron projections covered in a protective fatty sheath, called white matter, take over. In 1999, Giedd and colleagues showed that just before puberty, children have a growth spurt of gray matter. This is followed by massive "pruning" in which about 1% of gray matter is pared down each year during the teen years, while the total volume of white matter ramps up. This process is thought to shape the brain's neural connections for adulthood, based on experience.In arguing for leniency, Simmons's supporters cite some of the latest research that points to the immaturity of youthful brains, such as a May study of children and teens, led by NIMH's Nitin Gogtay. The team followed 13 individuals between the ages of 4 and 21, performing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) every 2 years to track changes in the physical structure of brain tissue. As previous research had suggested, the frontal lobes matured last. Starting from the back of the head, "we see a wave of brain change moving forward into the front of the brain like a forest fire," says UCLA's Thompson, a co-author. The brain changes continued up to age 21, the oldest person they examined. "It's quite possible that the brain maturation peaks after age 21," he adds.The images showed a rapid conversion from gray to white matter. Thompson says that researchers debate whether teens are actually losing tissue when the gray matter disappears, trimming connections, or just coating gray matter with insulation. Imaging doesn't provide high enough resolution to distinguish among the possibilities, he notes: "Right now we can image chunks of millions of neurons, but we can't look at individual cells." A type of spectroscopy that picks out N-acetylaspartate, a chemical found only in neurons, shows promise in helping to settle the issue. In addition to growing volume, brain studies document an increase in the organization of white matter during adolescence. The joint brief cites a 1999 study by Tomás Paus of McGill University in Montreal and colleagues that used structural MRI to show that neuronal tracts connecting different regions of the brain thickened as they were coated with a protective sheath of myelin during adolescence (Science, 19 March 1999, p. 1908).In 2002, another study revealed that these tracts gained in directionality as well. Relying on diffusion tensor MRI, which follows the direction that water travels, Vincent Schmithorst of the Children's Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, and colleagues watched the brain organize itself in 33 children and teens from age 5 to 18. During adolescence, the tracts funneled up from the spinal tract, through the brainstem, and into motor regions.? Another linked the two major language areas. "The brain is getting more organized and dense with age," Schmithorst says.Don't look at the lightAdults behave differently not just because they have different brain structures, according to Gur and others, but because they use the structures in a different way. A fully developed frontal lobe curbs impulses coming from other parts of the brain, Gur explains: "If you've been insulted, your emotional brain says, 'Kill,' but your frontal lobe says you're in the middle of a cocktail party, 'so let's respond with a cutting remark.' "As it matures, the adolescent brain slowly reorganizes how it integrates information coming from the nether regions. Using functional MRI-which lights up sites in the brain that are active-combined with simple tests, neuroscientist Beatriz Luna of the University of Pittsburgh has found that the brain switches from relying heavily on local regions in childhood to more distributive and collaborative interactions among distant regions in adulthood.One of the methods Luna uses to probe brain activity is the "antisaccade" test: a simplified model of real-life responses designed to determine how well the prefrontal cortex governs the more primitive parts of the brain. Subjects focus on a cross on a screen and are told that the cross will disappear and a light will show up.? They are told not to look at the light, which is difficult because "the whole brainstem is wired to look at lights," says Luna.Adolescents can prevent themselves from peeking at the light, but in doing so they rely on brain regions different from those adults use. In 2001, Luna and colleagues showed that adolescents' prefrontal cortices were considerably more active than adults' in this test. Adults also used areas in the cerebellum important for timing and learning and brain regions that prepare for the task at hand.These results support other evidence showing that teens' impulse control is not on a par with adults'. In work in press in Child Development, Luna found that volunteers aged 14 years and older perform just as well on the task as adults, but they rely mainly on the frontal lobe's prefrontal cortex, whereas adults exhibit a more complex response. "The adolescent is using slightly different brain mechanisms to achieve the goal," says Luna.Although the work is not cited in the brief, Luna says it clearly shows that "adolescents cannot be viewed at the same level as adults."Processing fearOther studies-based on the amygdala, a brain region that processes emotions, and research on risk awareness-indicate that teenagers are more prone to erratic behavior than adults. Abigail Baird and Deborah Yurgelun-Todd of Harvard Medical School in Boston and others asked teens in a 1999 study to identify the emotion they perceive in pictures of faces. As expected, functional MRI showed that in both adolescents and adults, the amygdala burst with activity when presented with a face showing fear. But the prefrontal cortex didn't blaze in teens as it did in adults, suggesting that emotional responses have little inhibition. In addition, the teens kept mistaking fearful expressions for anger or other emotions.Baird, now at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, says that subsequent experiments showed that in teenagers the prefrontal cortex buzzes when they view expressions of people they know. Also, the children identified the correct emotion more than 95% of the time, an improvement of 20% over the previous work. The key difference between the results, says Baird, is that adolescents pay attention to things that matter to them but have difficulty interpreting images that are unfamiliar or seem remote in time. Teens shown a disco-era picture in previous studies would say, "Oh, he's freaked out because he's stuck in the '70s," she says. Teens are painfully aware of emotions, she notes.But teens are really bad at the kind of thinking that requires looking into the future to see the results of actions, a characteristic that feeds increased risk-taking. Baird suggests: Ask someone, "How would you like to get roller skates and skate down some really big steps?" Adults know what might happen at the bottom and would be wary. But teens don't see things the same way, because "they have trouble generating hypotheses of what might happen," says Baird, partly because they don't have access to the many experiences that adults do. The ability to do so emerges between 15 and 18 years of age, she theorizes in an upcoming issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London.Luna points out that the tumultuous nature of adolescent brains is normal: "This transition in adolescence is not a disease or an impairment. It's an extremely adaptive way to make an adult." She speculates that risk-taking and lowered inhibitions provide "experiences to prune their brains."With all the pruning, myelination, and reorganization, an adolescent's brain is unstable, but performing well on tests can make teens look more mature than they are. "Yes, adolescents can look like adults. But put stressors into a system that's already fragile, and it can easily revert to a less mature state," Luna says.The amicus curiae brief endorsed by the APA and others also describes the fragility of adolescence-how teens are sensitive to peer pressure and can be compromised by a less-than-pristine childhood environment. Abuse can affect how normally brains develop. "Not surprisingly, every [juvenile offender on death row] has been abused or neglected as a kid," says ABA attorney Harper.Biology and behaviorAlthough many researchers agree that the brain, especially the frontal lobe, continues to develop well into teenhood and beyond, many scientists hesitate to weigh in on the legal debate. Some, like Giedd, say the data "just aren't there" for them to confidently testify to the moral or legal culpability of adolescents in court.? Neuroscientist Elizabeth Sowell of UCLA says that too little data exist to connect behavior to brain structure, and imaging is far from being diagnostic. "We couldn't do a scan on a kid and decide if they should be tried as an adult," she says.Harper says the reason for bringing in "the scientific and medical world is not to persuade the court but to inform the court." Fassler, who staunchly opposes the juvenile death penalty, doesn't want to predict how the case will turn out. "It will be close. I'm hopeful that the court will carefully review the scientific data and will agree with the conclusion that adolescents function in fundamentally different ways than adults." And perhaps, advocates hope, toppling the death penalty with a scientific understanding of teenagers will spread to better ways of rehabilitating such youths. ................
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