Abstract
Adolescents are developmentally distinct from adults in ways that merit a tailored response to juvenile crime. Normative adolescent brain development is associated with increases in risk taking, which may include criminal behavior. Juvenile delinquency peaks during the adolescent years and declines in concert with psychosocial maturation. However, current U.S. approaches to juvenile justice are misaligned with youth's developmental needs and may undermine the very psychosocial development necessary for youth to transition out of crime and lead healthy adult lives. In this article, I discuss empirically supported and efficacious responses to juvenile crime in the United States, as well as opportunities for further developmental reform of the juvenile justice system. Developmentally appropriate responses to juvenile crime prioritize community-based corrections and engage youth's social context in the rehabilitative process. The juvenile justice system shares the responsibility to prepare youth to live fulfilling, productive adult lives; that responsibility can be achieved by partnering with developmental scientists to inform juvenile justice practice and policy.
Adolescence is a time of increased risk taking, which for some youth may include illegal behavior. As a result, approximately 700,000 U.S. youth are arrested and processed through the juvenile justice system annually (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2020). Although the principal goal of the juvenile justice system is to rehabilitate youth, when viewed through a developmental lens, today's juvenile justice system falls short of supporting healthy adolescent development. Developmental science improves our understanding of children's behavior—including law-breaking behavior—and the most effective ways to adjust that behavior. Accordingly, developmental research can be applied to create a more effective and supportive juvenile justice system.
ADOLESCENT BRAIN DEVELOPMENT AND RISK TAKING
During adolescence, structural and functional changes to the adolescent brain underpin psychosocial development. These developmental processes have implications both for adolescent behavior and for appropriate system responses to adolescent crime. Although the developmental immaturity of adolescents alone does not cause juvenile delinquency, it is associated with risk taking, which often overlaps with criminal behavior.
Normative brain development underpins risk taking
The normative neural, biological, and psychosocial changes that characterize adolescence are associated with increased risk taking. Compared to adults, adolescents are less able to consider the consequences of their actions, plan for the future, control their impulses, and regulate their emotions (Casey et al., 2022). Additionally, the adolescent brain is very sensitive to social rewards, easily emotionally aroused, and primed to seek new sensations (Blakemore, 2012). While these normative changes can be adaptive, they are also implicated in risky behavior. For example, sensation seeking may propel youth to develop an independent identity and explore opportunities, but also spurs them to take risks (Crone & Dahl, 2012). Risk taking itself is intrinsically rewarding to adolescents (Albert & Steinberg, 2011), particularly in the presence of peers, which activates reward centers in the adolescent brain (Crone & Dahl, 2012).
Maturation takes place across different brain regions on distinct timetables. During adolescence, cognitive development occurs before socioemotional maturation, creating a gap in competencies. As a result, adolescents can make rational decisions in unemotional contexts, but may struggle to make mature decisions in emotionally arousing contexts (Shulman et al., 2016). A study of 10- to 30-year-olds from 11 countries of varied political, cultural, and economic contexts identified the same gap between youth's psychosocial and cognitive capacities (Icenogle et al., 2019), suggesting an endogenous rather than cultural explanation for these patterns.
As youth mature into adulthood, further brain development improves communication between the prefrontal cortex and the emotional centers of the brain so emotion regulation and behavioral control increase, and impulsivity and sensation seeking decrease. These changes result in a corresponding decrease in risk taking; according to a longitudinal study of racially diverse 9- to 18-year-olds in the United States, the tendency to engage in risky behavior peaks in mid-adolescence (Collado et al., 2014). Likewise, decades of research stemming from seminal criminological theory suggests that most youthful offenders desist from crime during adulthood (Moffitt, 1993). For this reason, juvenile delinquency is more appropriately considered a type of adolescent risk taking than a discrete form of antisocial behavior akin to adult criminality (Steinberg, 2014).
The developmental context and intervention strategies
Despite the normative increase in risk taking during adolescence, not all teenagers break the law and very few commit serious crimes (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2020). Rather, delinquency represents a dynamic interaction between developmental immaturity and a youth's context (Scott et al., 2018). Indeed, risk taking is manifested differently between youth, ranging from overtly illegal behavior like vandalism to legal but generally risky health behaviors like unsafe sex to prosocial behavior like aggressive athleticism in organized sports (Steinberg, 2014). How youth risk taking manifests may depend on the social environment. Household rules, parenting styles and practices, peer trends, school opportunities, and neighborhood factors all play a role in shaping adolescents' behavior, including risky behavior. Juvenile justice system approaches to rehabilitation should be responsive to the dynamic interaction between youth's social context and their development.
CURRENT APPROACHES TO JUVENILE JUSTICE AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR REFORM
The foundational tenets of the U.S. juvenile justice system are that youth are amenable to rehabilitation and fundamentally different than adults when it comes to criminal responsibility. Yet, despite this founding mandate, “get tough” crime policies during the 20th century shifted the goal of the juvenile justice system from rehabilitation to punishment. During this period, the number of youth who were detained, transferred to adult courts, and housed in adult facilities increased sharply, even as juvenile crime rates fell (Cavanagh et al., 2021).
In the beginning of the 21st century, the juvenile justice system began to return to its founding goal of rehabilitation. Advocates and researchers collaborated to apply developmental science to juvenile justice laws, policies, and practices. National professional juvenile justice organizations recommended and devoted resources to the use of developmentally supported policy. Several U.S. Supreme Court cases (Graham v. Florida, 2010; Miller v. Alabama, 2012, Montgomery v. Louisiana, 2015; Roper v. Simmons, 2005) acknowledged developmental research on the fundamental differences between juvenile and adult decision-making, and youth's strong potential for reform. Legislative changes at the local, state, and federal levels reduced the number of youth transferred to adult courts, incarcerated, and held in solitary confinement; improved community-based corrections; and increased the use of risk assessment and mental health screening tools. Although juvenile justice academics and practitioners champion maintaining this progressive trajectory in the face of headwinds toward a punitive approach (Cavanagh et al., 2021), more progress is needed for the juvenile justice system to truly reflect developmental science.
The mismatch between current juvenile justice approaches and adolescent development
The malleable adolescent brain is responsive to environmental stimuli. Thus, juvenile justice system responses must support youth's developmental needs. Yet, some juvenile justice approaches may be mismatched to these needs, undermining healthy adolescent development.
A punitive system and a reward-sensitive population
Developmentally, youth have difficulty considering the consequences of their actions (Shulman et al., 2016). In the justice system, punishment serves a deterrent function. In other words, one goal of a punitive justice system is to cause potential offenders to consider the consequences of their crime before committing it and decide to abstain instead. As a result of their developmental immaturity, adolescents are not well equipped to understand the potential consequences of their crimes, so a punitive approach is unlikely to deter delinquency (Lee et al., 2018). Youth are developmentally sensitive to rewards (Casey et al., 2022); expecting youth to flourish in a punishment-based system rather than a reward-based system sets them up for failure.
Juvenile justice system contact shifts youth’s social context
Children learn pro- or antisocial behavior patterns through exposure to key socializing units (e.g., family, school, peers, community institutions; Catalano & Hawkins, 1996). Healthy maturation during adolescence hinges on reciprocal interactions with a social context that provides a caring, authoritative adult figure and a prosocial peer group (Scott et al., 2018). Yet, juvenile corrections approaches undercut these social needs.
For youth who are detained, the detention context comprises their social world. In 2019, 36,479 youth were held in residential placement facilities in the United States on any given day (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2020). Although the specific environmental conditions within youth detention facilities vary widely, all detained youth are removed from their typical social context and placed in an atypical social context during a time of extensive social development. Most detention settings do not foster caring relationships between youth and an authoritative adult. The power dynamic between guards and detained youth is typically characterized by hostility and power, and devoid of caring guidance (Woolard et al., 2005). With respect to peers, detained youth's social interactions are with other detained individuals. Youth detained in adult facilities are vulnerable to exploitation by older inmates (Ahlin, 2020). Youth detained with same-aged peers may learn new methods of antisocial behavior from antisocial peers (“deviancy training”; Dishion et al., 1996). In this sense, incarceration may stall adolescents' psychosocial development by reducing opportunities for normative social experiences, disrupting contact with key social others (e.g., parents, friends, teachers, mentors) and increasing contact with antisocial others (i.e., fellow inmates). Because delinquent behavior results from a dynamic interaction between developmental immaturity and bonding to antisocial socializing units, this may increase the likelihood of future delinquent behavior (Scott et al., 2018).
The stakes of appropriate intervention
Adolescence is a seminal time during which youth acquire the tools, psychosocial skills, and identity that form their adult life. However, it is also a high-stakes time during which developmentally suboptimal events may have outsized consequences. Adolescence is considered the final period of developmental plasticity, when large-scale transformations in brain circuitry transpire (Galván, 2014). Neurological research on developmental plasticity has highlighted how the social environment and “turning point” events can shape adolescent brain development and as a result, the trajectory of a youth's life (Dow-Edwards et al., 2019).
The very regions of the adolescent brain that are associated with risk taking may not be able to mature appropriately in developmentally unsupportive contexts. Thus, experiences with the juvenile justice system can either support or undermine healthy psychosocial development away from risk taking. Some researchers conceptualize adolescence as a time of growth and opportunity for this very reason (Steinberg, 2014). Juvenile justice interventions must capitalize on the opportunity of adolescence through developmentally supportive practices rather than undermining development by providing an environment unconducive to growth.
DEVELOPMENTALLY SUPPORTED ALTERNATIVES FOR POLICY AND PRACTICE
To maximize adolescents' potential and reduce their likelihood of further involvement in crime, juvenile justice policy must recognize developmental science. Interventions by the justice system should provide meaningful opportunities for youth to acquire the skills necessary to prepare for autonomous adult roles.
Codifying developmentally appropriate legal responses
Developmental research has a role to play in juvenile justice reform efforts that seek to match youth to legal responses that are developmentally appropriate. Recent reform efforts have centered on codifying the ages at which youth are eligible for juvenile justice system intervention. The Raise the Age movement seeks to increase the maximum age of juvenile court jurisdiction. Although the federal age of majority in the United States is 18, in some states 17-year-olds are automatically sent to the adult court system rather than the juvenile justice system, despite their developmentally distinct rehabilitative needs. Thanks to the work of advocates, over the last two decades, 11 U.S. states have enacted legislation to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 18 years. Recently, Vermont became the first state to raise the age of juvenile justice jurisdiction to 20 years, in line with evidence that brain development continues beyond age 18; reformers are calling for other states to follow suit (Menon & McCarter, 2021).
Raise the Minimum Age efforts seek to increase the minimum age of juvenile court jurisdiction to 12 years old, in line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Most states (28) have no minimum age for prosecuting children in the juvenile justice system, while others set the minimum age as low as 6 years old. Raise the Minimum Age proponents argue that children under 12 are too cognitively immature to display the legal concepts of competency (i.e., fitness to stand trial) and capacity (i.e., criminal responsibility), that the standards for evaluating these concepts in children are neither uniform nor empirically supported, and that children are too immature to benefit from the interventions offered by the juvenile justice system (Abrams et al., 2020). Indeed, a review of research on neurocognitive, physical, sexual, and psychological maturation suggested 10 to 24 years as a more appropriate demarcation of the adolescent years, an argument that supports both Raise the Age and Raise the Minimum Age efforts (see Casey et al., 2022). Yet, relative to Raise the Age reforms, the Raise the Minimum Age movement has received less attention from policymakers and academics, positioning this reform movement as one in need of research from applied developmental scientists (Abrams et al., 2020).
Community-based corrections
Given the developmental salience of youth's social context, community-based correctional programs rehabilitate youth more effectively, provide greater continuity after court supervision has ended (Petrosino et al., 2022), and involve fewer health challenges (Barnert et al., 2020) than residential placement. Community-based approaches allow youth to prepare for life in their communities by addressing deficits and leveraging strengths in those contexts, rather than isolating youth through incarceration. For example, research suggests that multisystemic therapy reduces recidivism in youth precisely because therapists interact with youth as embedded members of their social contexts (i.e., family, peers, school, neighborhood; Lipsey, 2009). Community-based corrections take many forms; next, I discuss opportunities for developmentally supported components of this approach.
Use risk-needs assessments to guide case planning
Juvenile risk assessments are standardized instruments that estimate the likelihood that youth involved with the courts will reoffend based on empirically validated, criminogenically linked criteria (e.g., youth's personality, attitudes, school, family, peers, community; Andrews & Bonta, 2010). The success of these tools hinges on juvenile courts ensuring that they are reliable and valid for the local population and are administered with fidelity. Additionally, training and booster sessions should highlight the importance of responsivity, or how treatment should be provided for maximum efficacy in response to risk and needs (Holloway et al., 2018). Risk assessments often include a complementary appraisal of protective factors (strengths) in the same domains that risk was assessed. This strength-based approach facilitates holistic and effective case planning by simultaneously addressing youth's weaknesses and leveraging their strengths (Vincent et al., 2012). Indeed, meta-analytic findings suggest that courts that use reliable, valid juvenile risk assessments have lower rates of recidivism and higher rates of treatment compliance than courts that do not use these tools (Schwalbe, 2007).
Courts can provide developmentally appropriate rehabilitative care by assessing each youth's areas of need and matching the youth to skill-oriented services accordingly (Nelson & Vincent, 2018). Deterrence-based, punitive approaches are not developmentally appropriate; rather, skill building through positive reinforcement and rewards is more effective. For example, youth with deficits in the peer domain may be directed to programs that improve social skills to help them befriend prosocial peers. Strengths can similarly be leveraged: For youth with an interest in a certain career, programs that connect individuals to vocational skills in that career can prepare them for work under the supervision of a professional, who may double as a positive adult influence.
Implement restorative justice
Restorative justice (RJ) is the practice of convening crime victims and perpetrators so perpetrators can repair the harm done by their behavior. This approach shifts the response to crime away from punishment and toward making amends. In shifting focus, victims feel greater satisfaction and perpetrators develop healthier self-identities and social skills.
RJ approaches bolster youth's developmental needs. RJ identifies and addresses the source of the law-breaking behavior, both to hold the offender accountable and to more effectively integrate the offender into a supportive social network. By hearing directly from victims (and often, the youth's family or other caring adults in the community) about the harm their behavior caused, youth can take accountability while also practicing empathy and reintegrating into their community in preparation for adult roles (Frampton, 2018).
In addition to the potential developmental gains of RJ, in a meta-analysis of the approach, RJ programs moderately reduced recidivism relative to traditional juvenile court processing (Wilson et al., 2018). However, the success of RJ hinges on appropriate implementation and a match between youth's needs and what RJ offers; the meta-analysis concluded that diversion may be more effective than RJ for low-risk youth.
The social context of youth involved in the justice system
A youth's social context is critically important to healthy development and desistance from crime. Although an individual's social context spans many social interactions across levels, parents and peers are adolescents' two primary agents of socialization (Harrist & Criss, 2021).
Incorporate parents in the rehabilitative process
Youth involved in the justice system need a caring, authoritative adult to provide guidance. This is accomplished most parsimoniously through programs that help parents fulfill this role. However, justice system contact itself has a reciprocal, synergistic effect on the parent-adolescent relationship. In a longitudinal study of Black, Latino, and White 13- to 17-year-olds, the effect of a high-quality parent–child relationship at the time of a youth's first arrest reduced youth's recidivism. However, as youth continued to offend over time, parents reported less warmth in the relationship, suggesting that continued delinquency erodes the very relationship that protects against future delinquency (Cavanagh & Cauffman, 2017a). Thus, rehabilitative court interventions must deliberately help foster a strong parent–child bond.
A family-level perspective is important whether youth undergo community corrections or residential placement. Many successful community-based correctional programs leverage parents' existing skills and help them develop new skills to maximize their competence. Such programs highlight parental engagement and supervision and provide actionable tools for authoritative parenting (Kumpfer et al., 2015). Family relationships are important for the success of detained youth both during (Perkins-Dock, 2001) and after incarceration (Ruch & Yoder, 2018), yet extended periods of confinement weaken social bonds (Lynch & Sabol, 2001). Therefore, maintaining positive parent–child relationships during incarceration may be a mechanism for improving detained adolescents' well-being, as well as reducing likelihood of recidivism.
Despite consensus that parents should be partners in their child's rehabilitative process, no clear model or set of expectations exists for parental involvement (Burke et al., 2014). Additionally, parents face many challenges to participating. One challenge is that juvenile justice system practitioners and parents, while aligned in rehabilitating youth after an arrest, are not always aligned in their knowledge and attitudes. In a longitudinal study of parent–child dyads of arrested Black, Latinx, and White 13- to 20-year-olds, parents—particularly those of low socioeconomic status or from racial/ethnic- or linguistic-minority groups—knew little about how the juvenile justice system functions, and that limited legal knowledge was associated with less participation in their child's legal proceedings and ultimately, higher youth recidivism (Cavanagh & Cauffman, 2017b). Parents' lack of legal knowledge can be compounded by tense relations between parents and legal actors. When their child is consistently arrested over time, parents develop more negative attitudes toward the justice system (Cavanagh & Cauffman, 2019) and may socialize their children to hold similarly negative attitudes (Cavanagh & Cauffman, 2015).
A second challenge is that parental participation may be hampered by systemic racism. Although it is widely recognized that a disproportionate number of non-White youth enter and are processed by (rather than diverted from) the juvenile justice system, little progress has been made to reduce these racial/ethnic disparities (Cavanagh et al., 2021). From a developmental perspective, differences in family structure and function may reflect cultural differences rather than risk of criminality. For example, in a study of 13-year-olds in Arizona that controlled for actual family-level risk, probation officers rated Latino families as lacking appropriate parental supervision relative to White families, an attribution that informed harsher youth processing recommendations (Goldman & Rodriguez, 2020). Likewise, in a study of majority-Latino 13- to 17-year-olds in California, probationary restrictions undermined rather than augmented existing parental supervision practices (Fine et al., 2020).
The gap between the expectation that parents will partner with the juvenile justice system and the reality that parents (especially from minoritized families) face barriers to doing so presents an opportunity for developmental research. To move toward both equity and developmental reform, we must apply what we know about diverse, supportive parent-adolescent relationships to juvenile justice rehabilitative approaches.
Shift toward prosocial peers
Ideally, a youth's rehabilitative process limits access to and influence from antisocial peers while encouraging contact with prosocial peers. This is a challenge in residential settings, since the proximate peers are definitionally also antisocial. When residential placement is necessary, facilities should be very small, create a structured environment, and limit casual peer contact (e.g., the Missouri Model; Huebner, 2013).
Community-based interventions should help youth avoid the temptation of antisocial peer groups by facilitating connections with prosocial peers and building skills to reduce peer influence. Given the importance of (re)integrating youth with prosocial peers, school district policies that isolate or exclude youth who have been arrested are iatrogenic and serve only to further push youth to antisocial peer groups (Lipsey, 2009). Additionally, youth should be given the tools to get involved with prosocial activities (e.g., sports, clubs, volunteerism), where they may meet new prosocial peers (Farb & Matjasko, 2012).
CONCLUSION
Youth are developmentally different from adults in ways that merit a tailored societal response to crime. Adolescent risk taking, including actions that result in law breaking, is not necessarily a sign of adult criminality; most youth outgrow this tendency. A more ethical, empirically supported, and efficacious response to juvenile crime can match youth to developmentally appropriate legal responses, prioritize community-based corrections, and engage youth's social context in the rehabilitative process.
Juvenile crime has been decreasing for decades (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2020), largely the result of our improved understanding of developmentally appropriate interventions for youth involved in the justice system and the recognition of these interventions by lawmakers and practitioners. Yet, current approaches to juvenile justice still undermine healthy outcomes for youth. Applied developmental science is critical to guide decision-making in policy and practice. Only by providing youth with healthy developmental contexts and developmentally appropriate tools can we move toward more holistic and effective rehabilitation.