The Law Accepts Our Brains Aren't "Mature" at 18 or 21. We're Not Ready for What That Means.

[marmar]

Dangerous Minds
The legal world is slowly accepting that age 18—or 21—is not a magical moment of “adult” brain maturity. Are we ready for what that means?

BY JANE C. HU
DEC 27, 20225:45 AM


(Slate) In a car outside a convenience store in Flint, Michigan, in late 2016, Kemo Parks handed his cousin Dequavion Harris a gun. Things happened quickly after that: Witnesses saw Harris “with his arm up and extended” toward a red truck. Shots rang out. The wounded driver sped off but crashed into a tree. EMTs rushed him to the hospital. He was dead on arrival.

Two weeks later, Harris was arrested following a car chase. He and Parks were charged with the murder of Darnyreouckeonu Jones-Dickerson, known to his friends as Kee-Kee. At trial, a family friend testified that Jones-Dickerson and Harris had been feuding; Harris believed that Jones-Dickerson had been involved in the 2014 murder of his cousin Dominique Fuller. Parks and Harris were both convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Parks’ lawyers appealed the sentencing, arguing that it was unconstitutional. Parks was 18 at the time of his conviction, and his legal team asserted that it constituted “cruel and unusual punishment” to put an 18-year-old away for life. They cited several landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases: 2005’s Roper v. Simmons, which abolished the death penalty for people under 18, and 2012’s Miller v. Alabama, which held that those 17 and younger could not be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, sometimes referred to as LWOP. The lawyers argued that the age cutoffs established in those cases should be extended upward.

The case eventually made its way to the Michigan Supreme Court, and in one filing, a group of neuroscientists, psychologists, and criminal justice scholars submitted an amicus brief in support. “Drawing the line at 18 for when mandatory LWOP cannot be constitutionally imposed is, from a scientific perspective, both arbitrary and underinclusive,” they wrote. “From a scientific perspective, a person’s 18th birthday is not a rational dividing line for justifying LWOP or similar sentences because the brain continues to develop and change rapidly across all the relevant metrics for several more years.”

....(snip)....

But when it comes to neuroscience and punishment, it’s getting worse: A growing body of research strongly suggests that brain development continues well into people’s 20s and beyond. There’s no hard cutoff at which most people have a “mature” brain, and there’s unlikely ever to be one even as scientists conduct more and more studies of how our minds work. There aren’t even clear indicators to test for that would signal that an individual’s brain is now grown and that it’s time to hold them accountable to a higher standard. One of the few things we can say for sure: To draw a hard line at 18 is to get it perilously wrong.

Our legal and social systems struggle with how to account for this uncertainty. Now we’re beginning to confront it head-on when young people make poor or even horrible decisions, and learning whether we can truly embrace an openness to change and fluidity—not only within the law but within ourselves. ...............(more)

https://slate.com/technology/2022/12/teen-brains-neuroscience-justice-law-supreme-court.html

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. Not sure it makes a case for lowering sentences, but keep guns out of hands of 18 year olds

Especially handguns and assault-style rifles.

[Ocelot II]

2. 18-21 are the college years, and nothing stupid ever happens during college, right?

Once we got out of the classroom, where our brains were mature enough to do some fairly advanced math or analyze Finnegans Wake, most evidence of brain maturity seemed to evaporate. So the legal system has to figure out how to balance the capacity of a young brain to manage advanced intellectual thinking with its tendency to go off the rails and be epically stupid.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

3. Meanwhile, younger and younger

children are tried as adults. As young as 10.

[mopinko]

4. part of a broader issue.

i cant recall the title, nor find the book now, but i heard a guy on fresh air several years ago now that talked about how inadequate the insanity defense is, and how many other brain issues can affect our ability to make competent decisions.

ie- several mass shooters turned out to have brain tumors. here in cook county, juvie w violent records can get a brain scan to see if they have had tbis. ppl given steroids do all kinds of crazy things. he cited a woman who started gambling and bankrupted the family.
there are no small number of crimes committed by people who could be treated and unlikely to ever offend again. who does it serve to lock them up?
we do have some treatments for tbis. and for mental illnesses.

it’s bigger than maturity.

[msongs]

5. a relevant fact here is that brains of murdered people do not mature nt

[Hortensis]

6. "There's no hard cutoff" for maturity. Yes! Adolescence is considered to

finally end with development of brain maturity around 25, but again!...

One thing not mentioned is that some people's brains never achieve adult development. They're quite common. They can function very well through their lives, especially where their immediate wellbeing depends on it, and fall into huge jugement holes in others, such as deciding to "like" candidates who deceive them. Potentially devastating for representative democracy that depends on the capabilities of adulthood.

How about maximizeing one's own capabilities by insisting on respecting the connection between truth and achievement of goodness and recognizing when we do not know what truth is and that connection with making horrible mistakes.

It'd make a really high-quality resolution for 2023: Commitment to valuing truth.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

7. Oh, I am definitely ready for what that could mean.

[Mad_Machine76]

8. Unfortunately

This cuts several ways. While we might argue for lowered criminal sentences or restrictions on guns on the basis of the maturity of brain development, right-wingers seem to be using that for arguing for limits on transition for Trans folks between the ages of 18-21.